Favorite Episode: Misunderstood Verses? This 40-Minute Replay Clarifies 7 of Them + Dr. James Sedlacek

Jeremiah 29 11. I'm a little scared that you're about to tell me it doesn't mean

God has a plan for me and Everything's gonna work out for me. Is that not what it's saying? How did a first -century

Jew understand Jesus's statements? We don't see the context of the Babylonian captivity, but it is giving us a picture of the character of God Every line in here has something to do with the sheep tending of the ancient world.

This reads Completely different if you read it as if you are a sheep. I feel like the depth of that verse just doubled

Hello. Hello. Welcome to biblically speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host in this podcast

We talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts PhDs and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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Thank you so much for listening. Now. Let's get to the show. I'm really excited to talk about our topic today about translations

I'm excited about this as well I've been thinking about the original languages and translation and even interpretation issues for quite some time

Background is in both Hebrew and Greek and along with that the the different languages that help us understand something about rare words in Greek and Hebrew Translating the things that I notice when

I'm reading that sparks my interest is when I see something I know isn't typical when you see something that's unusual

That's when you jump and see how did the English translations handle that and then you see them all over the place and then you

Why it was a place that was a little more challenging to translate But it also sometimes is a center of a theological debate and those are my favorites

So there's sometimes translations where what it may be if it's in Greek it means something completely different But if it's in Hebrew, it means something else

Well in verse that comes to mind is Romans 5 the key word I would say in Romans 5 is the one just before All sinned at the end of the line.

I can read that first if you like please I'll read it out of let's read it out of the ESV that's a fairly recent translation therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and so Death spread to all men because and that's the key word

I want you to think about because all sent it almost reads like there's a cause and effect going on here

Yeah in this verse what the issue is is because is normally written a completely different way in Greek It's not written the way the

Greek is here. We have a little preposition there that's pronounced But it's an adaptation of epi and epi normally means on or upon so neither one of those

Translations sounded like on or upon because doesn't sound like on or upon and neither does in whom and so the most natural

Reading for that preposition is to say on the basis of which in other words There's just a pattern here human beings sin on the same pattern that Adam sinned

It's not that Adam sin caused people to sin and it's not that some other force that Adam brings in Caused people to sin people just simply sin on the same pattern that Adam did.

Yeah I mean, I definitely grew up thinking, you know, because Adam and Eve sinned that's why we sin

They kind of set the precedent they set the standard but that is way more Humanizing for the

Bible to say listen, they were human too. You're human too. It's what's gonna happen You guys are very sinful creatures

These original sin debates get very very particular at times on exactly how did it go from Adam to us?

None of our English translations translated the simple way Are you saying that when people translated the Bible they wanted to I want to say a stick to an agenda the

English? Translation doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? It happens in the middle of the Protestant Reformation During phases of it different English translations that come out are in different phases of the

Protestant Reformation So there's these debates that are going on that are forming the way that they're reading the

Greek text And now some of these debates go all the way back to Augustine's I mean it makes perfectly good sense why at the time period at which the

Bible was translated the current group thought of that time Period would be definitely inserted within those translations and just the directions that it takes

So talking about translation about a two hundred years before Christ the scribes the

Jewish scribes in Alexandria Egypt were commissioned by the Ptolemy King So under that King he commissioned the

Jewish scribes to translate the Jewish Hebrew Bible into Greek This was about 200 years or maybe a little more before Jesus's birth and then this fresh

Translation and for the lack of a better term, we'll call it the Septuagint. That's the term we call it today

They probably did not call it that back in their day But the Septuagint is it means number 70 in Greek It's just like calling it the 70 in English if we want to do this is like the 70th version or why did they say?

70 of all the numbers so the tradition has it that when the Torah scroll that's that's

Moses's first five books was being Translated the committee of translators was 70 70 people 70 people worked on it.

And how are those 70 chosen? They were already Jewish Torah scribes. That was their expertise They were fluent in Greek fluent in Hebrew and they would be the kind of person that if you saw them in the marketplace and you had plenty of time

And you paid them enough money. They could produce for you a manuscript of the Torah from memory

Yeah, this was during Egyptian times under King Ptolemy Yes in the Egyptian sphere of the world and under the

Ptolemies before Jesus was born yeah, yeah a

Couple -hundred years before we don't have an exact date we have some conjectures about that date that are all landing somewhere around 200 something like that and That the other thing is is they didn't stop there

They translated the Torah and then they kept going and translated the rest of the Hebrew Bible and we don't know how many people worked

On the rest, but the whole thing is still called the Septuagint because the 70 translated the

Torah That's why the name got it when going back to the Dead Sea Scrolls They found multiple scripts in multiple languages

What does that suggest that suggests that the community was already doing translating work making sure to they could translate?

The Hebrew text into Greek and into Aramaic for people that didn't speak Hebrew So you're saying the scrolls were all the same text just different translations or are you saying that because I guess

I assumed that one scroll was written by Peter and another was written by Moses and we just happen to stumble upon the original text, but that doesn't sound like that's correct

These would be all scrolls that were copied from other texts that this community kept

So think about a manuscript collector culture who collects manuscripts from all over and they want to make sure they have a copy in their

Scriptorium of every manuscript that's out there and then they may make copies for people who need it to Some what

I would call that collector mode just for trying to preserve scripts Okay, so we found somebody's stash essentially.

Yeah, we found the communities or maybe more than one community stash I don't think it's an accident that the

Septuagint was translated in Egypt the communities of Jews that would have went into Egypt would have been the forerunners of the ones who later do the

Translation into Greek and in some of these Hebrew texts We call them the Alexandrian family of Hebrew texts because those have a bunch of similarity and it's amazing in places where the

Greek Septuagint reads a little bit differently than our standard Hebrew Bible does it matches the

Alexandrian Hebrew texts rather than the Babylonian ones and this is kind of an eye -opener kind of thing in the last 40 -50 years

It's like oh There's more than one Hebrew text tradition and the Greek Septuagint Bible in books outside of Torah and Isaiah Used a different text tradition than what is now in the

Masoretic Bible That all translators use like if you're translating the newest English Bible You're gonna translate from the

Masoretic text on the Hebrew text I think a lot of people take I think you know just in the conversations

I've had people say, you know, one of their biggest things is like look there's contradictions. There's been so many translations

How can you trust the Bible? I feel like we hear that pretty often in the biblical debates But at the end of the day, it's not a malicious intent to not be aligned

It's not somebody reading the Bible or translating the Bible and intentionally making up something to make it different than what actually happened

It's just in reality. The story is told by people who experience the same event differently

Yes, especially when you got multiple eyewitnesses on the same event. Yeah, they're gonna see it different No, two people looking at the same thing are impacted by the same details

Yeah, so if Mark writes a detail that John leaves out John writes a detail that Mark leaves out

It's not because they're bad observers. It's because they're different people and exactly. Yeah, I think

I think that's a important point to say Yes. Now, let's jump into the word because I have so many more verses.

I want to run through with you Yeah, so I'm gonna read 2nd Samuel 21 19 and follow it up with 1st

Chronicles 25 20 verse 5 And there was a war with the Philistines again at Gob and Elhanan the son of Jair or a game the

Bethlehem I'd killed Goliath the Gittite The shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam

So when you read this in Samuel immediately you're scratching your head because didn't David kill him four chapters earlier

David and Goliath David and Goliath now we got Elhanan killing Goliath now This is this is sort of the

Wow moment Chronicles 20 is telling the same story as as the 2nd Samuel 21 was doing and there was again a war with the

Philistines in Elhanan the son of Jair and That particular edition left off the place where Jair was from but struck down Lachmi the brother of Goliath the

Gittite the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam all of the same details But we got a different identity for the one who died.

It's not Goliath It's Goliath's brother and it's clear that Goliath is a name in first Chronicles because Lachmi is his brother

If it's just a class noun class nouns don't have brothers names of people have brothers So in biblical commentaries, this thing was tossed around as oh, no

One of these books is in error, which one the second thing that was tossed around. Maybe Goliath isn't a person's name

Maybe it's a class of a giant or something. Well when we start looking at these things

This is the book that when we look in the Dead Sea Scrolls has three text traditions They are from different Hebrew traditions

And one of the things that we see is that the Greek Bible seems to agree with one of them what

I mean by agree it has an easy -to -see connection between the translation into Greek and what you're seeing in Hebrew and then the

Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible agrees more with a different one So it seems like the Greek Bible is not reading the same one that landed in the

Masoretic tradition and so some of our Bibles actually did translate from the

Greek instead of the Hebrew for the book of Samuel and when they do they don't say Goliath they say the brother of Goliath.

I'm gonna read that right now with the NIV version. Uh -huh. So they caught it Well, what is the thing with it?

They're seeing what is the piece that makes this puzzle fit together? When you when you draw in Hebrew when you draw a

Hebrew particle that stands in front of a direct object It starts with an aleph and it has a tav after it

Those two consonants are called aleph and tav and it's chet on the end The only difference in shape between a chet and a tav is one tiny little foot at the bottom of one stroke of the letter think about the difference between a capital

I when it has just the straight line up and down and the capital I when you have the caps on the top and the bottom

Mm -hmm Now imagine on that capital I you don't have the top cap you only have half of the bottom cap

So only pointed one way like a miniature L sort of shape, right? Mm -hmm Now one letter has that the other doesn't it's a very very small piece and when we read the ancient rabbis on the text of Samuel they mentioned two things that the end of the scroll of Samuel was

Actually burned and worms had eaten holes in the parchment before it came back from Babylon and was then copied

So if you've got a wormhole sitting exactly on that letter You could easily mistake the letter for the other letter and that would explain why we have both renderings in different Hebrew manuscripts

It's a very reasonable explanation It's more reasonable than anything in print in the last hundred years, right?

and so some one scribe thought it was a tav and the other one thought it was a chet and this this produces a

Transmission error not a text error. That was in the original writing not a theological error

But a misreading just from copying from one generation to the next think about people doing church plants today

What if your first task as a church planner was to get your own copy of the Bible? That would have been a standard thing at least get key books like you want

Psalms first and you want maybe the Gospels next and If I started a church back in the day and I needed obviously some reading material for my congregation

My task number one was to begin transcribing the books of the Bible So I had my copy

It takes a while, yes Imagine almost completing a chapter and you have a little mess up with your ink.

You got to start all over. That'd be horrible Yes I want to spend some time going over some really common verses that my mom has

Hanging on a sign on top of her sink or you know, people have tattooed I have a tattoo of some

I have a prayer tattooed on me But you know some people have Bible verses tattooed on their bodies I want to know are some of them interpreted differently, you know is the

American I'm sorry the English translation of this verse Maybe not what we think it is and I have four verses for you

I actually have five because I want to start in Genesis Genesis is fascinating to me So I really want to talk about this is

Genesis 1 1 through 5 in the beginning God and this is the NIV version in The beginning God created the heavens and the earth

Now the earth was formless and empty darkness over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters and God said let there be light and there was light

God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness God called the light day and the Darkness, he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day where does that?

What's wrong with that, right? So a couple of things in the whole passage that are that are interesting to me is that very first word in Hebrew is

But a sheet or a sheet is a combination of several words that are smashed together the same way we do when we say the word don't

It's a contraction of several words and the center word is head so the head of things in the head of things during the head of things is sort of the meaning of it and we probably

Don't translate it too badly Probably what we think it means is is is about right because a head can be the source it can be the origin or it

Can be the first point in time on a timeline so it makes sense in all of those meanings But it's it's somewhat challenging when people are beginning to translate from Hebrew to English for practice

How do we go from head to in the beginning? That's like because it gets translated in the beginning, but if there's several ways to translate it

We could say in the first moment instead of in the beginning in the first time in the first moment

We could do that or in the head of things God created heaven and air The other thing that stands out to me in verse 5 and for me that one's not a huge deal though Is it in the beginning in the head of things whichever way we're translating we probably still mean the same thing

So we're not really I feel like that's such a point of like scientific contention of like what was the beginning?

What are we saying the moment? You know like the Big Bang is when the bang happened or is this just like the upon us of God?

Is that the beginning and I think I don't know Do you feel like there's any translations there that kind of lean into what you know?

Just especially when it was translated in that time Is the head supposed to represent something that back in biblical times mean something that we wouldn't recognize as the head today the word head

Is used for so many relationships like in Hebrew the head of the mountain is the top mountain the head of the river is where?

The river starts so we get this another form of head is a reshown Which means first like first place first place ribbon would be a reshown

So the word gets a lot of range of use like our English word head does we can talk about a head as a source?

as the top of something like the head of the ladder we can use the word head to talk about the beginnings of a

Process the different things we could interpret from Genesis 1 would still be Interpretation options no matter which way we translated that word

I think because two big options come to mind is there a beginning of all things and then a beginning of creation that happened a

Long distance in time apart or is this all in an instant? And I don't think either translation of that actually has a much of a weight in that decision

Because the issue there becomes how do I know what the right referent for head is it's not it's not what does it mean?

It's what is the right referent? What does it point to one of the things in language or linguistics that we say is semiotics?

Semiotics is a system of signs and the things they point to and we can use language to point to Lots of different things think about how a pronoun is used to point to a noun

I can say Sammy was a good dog. He was brown and white. He was a beagle.

Okay, I can do that It was one of the dogs we used to have but I'm using a pronoun to refer back to Sammy, right?

So head of something doesn't have a noun after and so we don't have a referent that's explicit

Is it the head of all time the head of all created matter or in the head of something special that's happening?

I think those interpretation options are still open for debate and discussion regardless of which specific way we translate the first word

Okay. Okay. You had a point for later livers five. Yeah in verse five I got three translations up on my screen

God called the light day the darkness He called night and the evening and the morning were the first day

God called the light day the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day and God called the

Light day in the darkness. He called night and there was evening and there was morning one day Those translations kind of evoke little bits of differences on how we're referring to that day it was the first day out of many or it was the first day as a

Apposition tacked on to the sentence or it was one day not necessarily a numerical number like it didn't number a sequence

It's just one day. So we have three options that seem to be suggested by the three translations

I read and I read King James Version English Standard Version and New American Standard Bible when I teach

Hebrew This is one of the verses that we go over in beginning Hebrew very early on it's one of the first verses

I have students read and when we first start to translate we get into that first pretty soon and When I read it in Hebrew a completely different arrangement of clauses

Emerges to my mind than what we typically see in any of those three English translations

I read for example they sound like a person just giving a summary of what what happened and the next verse if you read the first verse like a summary you're going to read the next one like a summary and And I think sometimes the way we've translated

Genesis one We haven't distinguished between what is a summary statement or a setting statement and what is dramatic telling?

When when you tell a drama to a group of people you don't put clauses in the same order that you do when you're just Giving a summary like if your friend said, oh you went shopping yesterday.

What happened? I went to Walmart. I went to the mall I went to somewhere to eat and I went home.

That's a summary But if you say while I was at the mall, I ran into this person. I hadn't seen in a while and I said

Oh, wow, how are you? That's dramatic, right? It's not just a summary So when I'm reading through this in Hebrew There are things that are not natural clauses here when reading along how the words are connected and then the clause markers that are there

Suggests something else to me and I've translated it this way and God called the light day and the darkness

He called night The first half is pretty similar and there was evening pause and there was morning pause day one

It's not organized the same way as the first day It's not organized the same way as a tack -on clause for a preceding clause

It's organized as its own separate clause one day day one and we do this when we're being dramatic

We would say there was evening there was morning day one And that's

I guess what's the takeaway when people orally handed down stories from the ancient world to the next generation?

They were usually orally told by a dramatic retelling of the event and what we have

Recorded here in Genesis in Hebrew is Moses giving us the dramatic version as a storyteller would tell it

It's not a narrative summary. It's not just blah this detail that detail and now it's all fall asleep

It's it's this happened this happened and then right when we pause long enough, whoa this happened, you know

Somebody's in front telling this to the kids We have a recording of a dramatic telling of Genesis and and we should read it that way

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Take a breath slow down and dwell in the good things now back to the show But that doesn't negate it being a literal telling no

No, it doesn't but I think if we read it like the drama that it is We begin to pick up some of these things as dramatic elements in the story as opposed to just okay

We've got six days of detail one right after the other in the same phraseology one after the other

That's not how they are in Hebrew. Some of them are summation stories or pieces. Some of them are dramatic pieces

It's almost as though the teller of the creation account Once let's to kind of summarize bits and then wow us with other pieces of detail and that goes missing in your

Typical English translation the dramatic pieces are gone emphasis. Yeah emphasis.

There you go I like that word there's emphasis on certain acts of God and certain results like when

God says things are good That's a big deal. We sometimes pass over that but it's actually repeated after each day of creation

He looks and things are good So repetition is one way of giving emphasis but also the clause structure.

It's it's just a relative clause marker and good It's truncated. It's choppy. And when we get excited and we're telling something we don't put the smoothness of sentences out there

We make it a little choppy because we're trying to put pauses in here and have explosions of drama here

It reads that way to me. Okay, I'm gonna keep going to another verse and this one is my favorite verse

Jeremiah 29 911 this is my confirmation verse. I love this verse. It is hits home for me

So I'm a little scared that you're about to tell me it doesn't mean God has a plan for me And everything's gonna work out for me because right this is the way that I read the verse

It's the NIV version Jeremiah 29 11 for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope and a future

I love that that makes me feel so secure so safe. Is that not what it's saying?

well, when we look at this verse and there were two other ones that are similar to it and and I grew up with The one in Philippians and it was for I can do all things through Christ which strengthen us me

Yes, it'd be Superman. I could be Batman which were bad interpretations of that verse, right? We all know

I can't be either of those Superman or Batman. I can do all things Well, one of the things that occurs to me

Yeah, we have two ways of reading the Bible that have come down through history and both of them are valid one of them is

To understand the context of each verse in how it was historically understood by its first readers

How did a first century Jew understand Jesus's statements? What would be typical for them to understand by that and then what does the context around this verse say to it?

These are verses that have a greater context and when they were uttered they had a meaning that was based on their context and They we should understand what that meaning was as we read it.

That's important So let's take a Jeremiah 29 10 is where I'll start. We probably could go back a little earlier and capture some more

Yeah let's sandwich it the verse before the verse itself and then the one after so back in 10 for thus says the

Lord when 70 Years are completed for Babylon. I will visit you and who is the

Lord talking to here? He's talking to Israel or the kingdom of Judah That's just been yanked off into captivity or in Jeremiah's case here about to be it hasn't yet happened by chapter 29

God is saying these things ahead of time. So when the 70 years are completed, that's the years of the captivity

I will visit you I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place back to Judah for I know the plans

I have for You declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope

Then I will then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you So what the issue is is that for the most part not you can't say it's true for everyone

It's hard to even want to say it's true for most people But it's true for the elite at least and maybe they've affected most people in Judah.

They aren't praying to the Lord They're praying to idols and they're entrapped with several cycles of pitching

God's message and picking up a different Message and running with it. So this is their situation

And so people crying out at this moment are not heard because judgments coming but God is promising that he will restore

He will bring back and then when they pray he will hear so there's there's a whole process that's involved there

And so in verse 11 the plans I have for you refer to God's statement to Judah to limit the captivity to 70 years

It's not going to go on forever and then return them and restore them so that they will build a nation again

And they actually do that when we read our Hebrew Bibles We don't see the whole picture of it because we just see some rebuilding efforts

We see the temple get rebuilt a lot of internal struggles and strifes We don't see much more about that But there's a book that was written between the

Hebrew Bible and the New Testament called the book of the Maccabees. There's Book one and book two and in the books of the

Maccabees it details them becoming a powerful nation again During the time when the two

Greek regions had gone to war and devastated the land and in that power vacuum

They emerged powerful again for a while and and at that time the kingdom is as large as Solomon's Kingdom But we don't read about it in the

Hebrew Bible because it's in a different time period it happens after the Hebrew Bible was written Before Jesus comes as a baby.

So the verse speaks to that but What I would say for devotional reading

God always has even when bad things are coming God always has a way of using it to bring us back to the good end

So even though this is a bad thing that's going to happen There's a good thing at the end of it and and restoration is there

So if we read it alone as verse 11 by itself We don't see the context of the

Babylonian captivity and the return It's it's kind of chopped off there But it is giving us a picture of the character of God and this is how

God generally operates So in this kind of thing, it's not a bad reading to say well

God has plans for me, too So sometimes we have to separate those two readings. Yeah I can do all things through him who gives me strength.

It's not saying that you'll be all -powerful like Superman It's saying that when that hard time comes

God will give you the strength to get through it Right. Yeah, and I want to take a minute and say thank you to the recording service that has made this podcast possible

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Thank you so much now back to the show and there's another one in Philippians and my

God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus I shouldn't suffer financially then right?

Right? You're good to go. I shouldn't have any Bible said so, right? And and and here's where I like to think of when we try to say what does this text mean?

Not only do we go a little broader and pick up the verses before and the verses after it to see what

Paul is talking About there, but we also want to get our heads around the idea of what's in the whole of Scripture So here with Philippians Paul has been addressing the church at Philippi and so this is that town

This is that region and and this is the place that the horses came from for Alexander's cavalry that were famous in battle.

So this is a prestigious city I'll go back to verse 16 even in Thessalonica You sent me help for my needs once and again and in Thessalonica is one of those

One of those churches that is just sponsoring Paul as he goes around planting churches They're like when things were happening bad in Jerusalem They handed money to go help the the

Jerusalem folks out when things were happening bad in Corinth They did the same thing. So this group is like that And so Paul says you met my needs not that I seek the gift

He's not asking for it, but that I seek the fruit that increases to your credit So them giving gave them a spiritual blessing and Paul is saying

I am glad you did that because you're gonna grow in Spiritual blessings because of it. That's what I seek for you

I wasn't actually seeking the gift, but I do seek your spiritual blessings. I Have received your full payment and more

I am well supplied having received from Epaphroditus the gifts that you sent a fragrant offering.

What was that? They sent him some cologne in the mail something like that some perfume and that can't be bad Right and a sacrifice acceptable to pleasing to a

God and here's what we realize he's using the fragrant offering They're giving gifts to him to help the ministry

Metaphorically was a fragrant offering up to God and now we see the the metaphor is related to sacrifices and incense

So they're they're giving is parallel to a sacrifice He didn't really get cologne in the mail But it makes us wonder sometimes when we read just a phrase a fragrant offering a sacrifice

Acceptable pleasing to God and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory now

We see the bigger picture they gave sacrificially to help God's mission grow now God will supply to every one of their needs

There's something in there with that context that if we just take the verse and go with it. We miss what's happening

It makes a different sense in what Paul's talking about if we if we realize that this is on the tail end of just having

Received a bunch of stuff from these guys. How many times do we do this in speech? Thank you for what you gave me may

God bless you. I wish that God blesses you now because you've given to me It's very similar language here.

This is where this verse is located It's right in that tail end as he's summing up his thought and he's about to say goodbye.

He's ending on a high note He's acting as an ambassador of God to say that God's gonna give you stuff

Right. It's right as he's closing off. It's not saying like a blanket statement of like here's a rule

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It's the context of well, I've been given supplies

I've been given resources because of that. I'm very strengthened that is because of God. Thank you for your service

You have to see it as such versus just taking that blanket statement of like see right here

He said I would be good so I feel like this is One of the most popular one of the biggest and it's the psalm psalm 23 the psalm of David Do you want to read the whole thing but give emphasis to the area that needs more clarification?

Let's have you read it in whatever version you like Got it. Okay. I'll read it in NIV. So psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

He refreshes my soul He guides me along the right paths for his namesake, even though I walk through the darkest valley

I will fear no evil for you are with me your rod and your staff They comfort me you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies

You anoint my head with oil my cup overflows Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the

Lord forever Ah, so sweet. My cup overflows. I love that. Yes One of the things that comes to mind go ahead

I was about to say but is it not that sweet Are we missing something here? Would we want a bunch of oil dumped on our heads?

That could be a real mess, couldn't it and yet it's in there annoying I see like a thumbprint of oil not like a mass try a 16 ounce jar of olive oil

That's the overflowing cup it's float over here we go buddy lots of oil. Yeah, it's uh,

There's pieces of it that makes us scratch our heads what's going on here. It's obviously got a good tone to it

We like what it says. It sounds very caring Someone's caring for us right and that is the point of the song

God cares for his sheep us But we often miss the metaphors in here because we don't realize that this is about sheep tending

Every line in here has something to do with the sheep tending of the ancient world and David was a shepherd

He guarded sheep in his lifetime before he became a king And so he's comparing God taking care of David the same way as David used to take care of the sheep

And in the life of a sheep herder there's a season there's a cycle about taking care of sheep

It lasts about a year and then you have to repeat the cycle again in the ancient Near East even modern

Near East This is still true. You have rainy and dry rainy and dry So when are your rainies your rainies are the spring in the fall your dries are the summer in the winter?

But that's how they name it the early rains in the late rains in the year And so you see this phrase in the

Bible a lot that the early rains in the late rains or just one of the two Phrases and sometimes that misses our attention

We don't know what that means But it's because that's the time of the year you get a lot of water during the spring rains and the fall rains the summer

You don't it's dry winter is also dry. So the sheep cycle is built around the weather cycle

So the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want this is the attitude of the sheep. I've got a good shepherd guarding me

I won't have anything that I need he's gonna make sure I have what I need when we think about this in a modern

Secularized world I shall not want means I'm gonna get everything I want That's a bad interpretation because it isn't about we won't have desires and it doesn't mean that all of our desires are fulfilled

That's not what's happening here What's happening here is that the sheep won't have anything lacking in the things they need because the shepherd is good

All right, he makes me to lie down in the green pastures. This is the early rains. This is the spring

He moves them out of the barn lots near the village and moves them up to where the grass is starting to grow in the spring

So he leads makes me lie down in the green pastures He leads me beside the still waters. The waters are still at this time of the year

And so as the sheep moves he keeps guiding the sheep to where that's green and where the waters are still if you take the sheep

Past fast -moving water or dangerous water They jump in and they drown or they get ripped off downstream and their life is at risk

So the shepherd has to know where the wadis are and which thing is flooding and when and make sure sometimes the shepherd leaves the sheep with other shepherds and goes on ahead and scouts out the path and then comes back to make sure that He's leading the sheep to good grass and good water that won't harm the sheep

Bad water is also a place for predators to ambush the sheep from and so you want to bring the sheep to a good place

He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake when we think about a righteous path

We think about morals. That's what our mind first goes to But in paths of righteousness is the paths where the scorpions are not going to be there

The shepherd has already cleared the path and made sure the path is clear of typical things that harm the sheep

Before he takes the sheep through it and that reminds me again on the green pastures part The shepherd also has to remove certain weeds that cause

Belly bloats in the sheep so that they would get sick and fall over and die The sheep are pretty helpless if they get that and then they'll just go four legs up and they can't get back on their feet

And they're dead even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. This is summer now What does that mean the valley of the shadow of death?

The wadis are drying up and we're gonna have to pick a wadi and we're gonna have to get up on the high

Plateau if we're gonna find food This is the riskiest time in the life of a sheep in the year cycle because in order to move from the foothills to the high

Plains they've got to go up these narrow wadis where the mountain lions live a wadi just for clarification is just the ravine

Ravine. Yeah, think about like in the American Southwest. We have these arroyos

Yeah, same thing. Wow, this reads completely different if you read it as if you are a sheep.

Yeah And so this shadow the valley of the shadow of death is when you're transitioning from low ground to high ground and you're moving through those

Ambush points where the mountain lions like to ambush the sheep the shepherds gotta be on his game there and it's it's not

Accidental that when David is a lad talking to Saul says I killed a lion and a bear with my weapons to protect the sheep

This would be the time when the shepherd might need to do that in verse 4 This is when the sheep are walking through the valley of the shadow of death deaths on every hand if they don't move they die

Because the grass is running out down here If they move the wrong way, they die because the shepherd or if they move with the bad shepherd

They die because nobody cleared the path for them. Nobody took care of the predators. Nobody picked the best path

So there's really a valley of shadow of death all around this transition from the low plains to the high plains

Yeah, I will fear no evil for you are with me This is the role of the shepherd doing what's needed for the sheep your rod and then your staff they comfort me now this thing

Here rod and staff gets interpreted a lot of different ways. I've heard people say well, that's the discipline for the sheep

No, this is not a discipline for the sheep the rod and the staff do two different things one of them has a crook on the end and it'll rescue a sheep if they

Fall off the cliff it just hooks around them and you pull them back up if they get unsteady you help them up This is a little bogey.

Yeah, exactly. The other one's a club for fighting off the enemies to the sheep So you have a defensive

Weapon and you have a tool to rescue down sheep both are necessary as you move through here

And so the sheep takes comfort that the shepherd is going to protect the sheep if something bad happens

He's going to help me back up on my feet. And secondly if an enemy comes he's going to club the enemy

And that next part is where we all think we're going out to Sunday dinner The Table is prepared before me.

I'm at the Sunday dinner. I'm at the big smorgasbord This is the this is a word the table when they get up over the table land

Something about that interaction causes rain to happen and now there's green grass up there So once the sheep gets up to the top of the plateau, that's the table land

You have prepared it before me and this is also referring to the shepherd going along and plucking out that weed

That's going to kill the sheep And so the shepherd actively has to prepare the table land for the sheep to pasture every year

And then the sheep goes out and eats prepared grass on the table land in the presence of my enemies the

Lions looking they pass Through those places, but the Lions are still lurking there They're watching the lion knows that these sheep are helpless on their own fine because the shepherds there

Yeah, you anoint my head with oil that's where I was joking earlier about the whole cup of oil dumped on us

But actually this is this is the thing that protects the sheep from insects Burrowing insects that get into the skin and the fur and give them horrid skin issues

And this is the time of the year when they need it think about animals on the farm But here's the ancient method oil and it takes a lot of it

So even the Irritating little things that can creep into our lives and get ourselves all in a mess can be anointed so that they don't hurt us

That's that's the sheep getting anointed for the summer hazards with the insects surely goodness and mercy

So follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever They go back down the hill to the barn lot for the winter.

That is so beautiful You kept reading lines and I was looking ahead. I'm like, there's no way we're still talking about The sheep and then you would tie it back with a fact.

I didn't know that is wow I feel like like the depth of that verse just doubled. So this is so amazing.

Oh my gosh I feel like the more we learned about the Bible just the more layers we discovered and when we think about this

This is a line by line item by item all year long. God taking care of us. Yeah.

Oh My gosh, I can't thank you enough for providing all of this insight and all of this wisdom and sharing all of your knowledge

I feel like this is deepening a lot of the Bible for me personally and I feel like this is gonna be one of the

Longest podcasts we have because you could do this for every single line of the Bible and this just adds so much more enrichment

So, I mean there's just endless things we could talk about even not just the Bible but before the Bible and how it applies today

But again, thank you so much, and I really appreciate your time doctor. Thank you Cassie, and it's been a wonderful conversation