Lesson 4 | Searching the Original
Danger: Forgetting to Double-Check
It is way easier to check someone else’s work than to solve a problem yourself.
This is true with a mathematical proof. You need to know a ton to write up the proof. You need know only some to confirm it. This is true in criminal law. It often takes a master detective to figure out “who dun it,” whereas any thoughtful person can assess the evidence against a defendant once it is compiled.
And this is true of Bible claims as well. For a preacher or scholar to discover and prove something, he needs to make careful observations, compose a thesis, check all of the Scriptures to see if it holds, and then present it to you. But in most cases, you can test his claim simply with the skills learned in this course! It is far easier to confirm or debunk a biblical claim than it is to make and prove one.
Therefore, far be it from us to learn such skills but then fail to double-check others’ claims! Yes, your pastor has spent much more time studying the Scriptures than you have and should be treated with great respect. Still, you are to “test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) just like those noble Berean Jews (Acts 17:11).
Do NOT arrive at an original language conclusion without double-checking.
For example, it is sometimes stated from the pulpit that Hebrew has two words for fear—one conveying the idea of reverence and the other meaning the dread of something terrifying. We are told that the first of these two alone is how we are to feel toward God. Looking up the original language information for these two words we discover the following.
Examining this lexical information, it appears that these words do, in fact, have two different connotations. The second is of greater intensity than the first. It can be “sudden” and reach the level of “terror,” whereas the first seems to convey a fearful heaviness with the words “reverence” and “dreadful.”
Can we confirm this and what we heard from the pulpit with a couple of searches?
We can. Browsing through the search results we see that פַּחַד (pâchad) is often used for a terror you want to keep at a distance and avoid stirring up. On the other hand, יִרְאָה (yirʼâh) typically portrays an ongoing disposition toward another—a desirable posture toward God in particular.
But the suggestion that our fear of God should not have any element of dread within it is also shown to be false in these searches. For one, while יִרְאָה (yirʼâh) is almost always used in reference to God, so also is פַּחַד (pâchad) frequently presented as a disposition we are to have toward him. Secondly, even יִרְאָה (yirʼâh) has some “scary” contained within it. For example:
4 My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me. 5 Fear [יִרְאָה/yirʼâh] and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me. Psalm 55:4-5