Jun 17, 2022
2SAMUEL 17:
Yesterday we heard how Saul's servant, Ziba,
showed his loyalty and helped David on his way. And how Shimei from
Saul's family cursed and persecuted David all along the way. No
wonder David was exhausted after that hike. David refused to put
him to death or to punish him. (But we find out later that he
didn't forget about Shimei.) David's friend, Hushai, joined himself
to Absalom, as David asked him to do. And Nathan’s prophecy to
David was unknowingly fulfilled through Ahithophel’s advice to
Absolom.
PSALM 116:
This
is a poem sharing personal experience. Though this poem is not
attributed to David, what we read here could be his prayer during
and following what we are reading about in 2nd Samuel
17-18.
John 1a:
I
always look forward each year to reading the Gospel of John. John’s
Gospel is different from all the other gospels. John was probably
very young when he became Jesus’ follower, perhaps 25 years old.
But he seems to have waited until very late in life to begin
writing, perhaps when he was 85 years old. This was long after the
other Gospels and even the epistles were written. The title he
gives himself in this book is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. This
doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t love the other 11!
NLT Translation
notes:
[I
changed the whole of Ps. 116 to become a prayer to God, like has
been done in the CEV. This prayer is a prayer directly to God. Note
that the first verse starts, “I love Yahweh hear sound
supplication.” One can see that using the proper name (and with no
pronoun ‘he’ actually there in the second phrase), that this is
easy to understand as a prayer to God. But the standard translation
of Yahweh is ‘the Lord’, so that ‘he’ is added in the second phase.
That is why most translation sound like this is a poem talking
about the Lord, not a prayer directed to Him. It is actually proper
and better to understand this as a prayer, so nearly every verse
changed. I note here only a few verses where I made special
comments.]
Ps.
116:4 Then I called on [You, Lord://the name of the
LORD:]
“[Lord,
please//Please, LORD,] save me!”
[This use of ‘the name’ is a metonymy based on
the Jewish avoidance of actually saying the Lord’s name. ‘The name’
stands for the whole person of the Lord. In English, calling on a
name is quite unnatural. I would never call on Chad’s name. I would
just call Chad or call on Chad. See v.13.]
13 I
will [pour out an offering of wine to You giving thanks for Your
saving me//lift up the cup of salvation]
[Before looking into this while I was
recording, I wrongly guessed at the meaning of ‘lift up the cup of
salvation’, as “I will drink a toast to God because of my
salvation.” As it happens, that is kind of what The Message has.
This just shows what happens when modern readers confront a literal
translation of such a figure. And note that NLT is inconsistent in
reverting to a literal translation here, while most of the time
translating in a meaning-based way.]
and [I will] praise [You//the LORD’s name for
saving me].
[Like we saw
in verse 4, if we were really going to literally ‘praise the Lord’s
name’— meaning just his name, and not praise His person, it appears
like idolatry to me. (I do hear people saying things like that, but
when they do I take it that they are parodying Bible language.) How
often do we hear people using a phrase like, “They praised Obama’s
name for his speech at…” I think almost always, when people say
things like that about our president, they just praise Obama and
leave his name out of it.]
17
[[[I will offer a sacrifice of thankful prayers to
You.////
I
will offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving
[and
I will give thankful prayers to You.//and call on You,
Lord,
because of your wonderful reputation// and call
on the name of the LORD].]]]
[Note here that “sacrifice of thanksgiving” is
ambiguous in English. It could mean that his offering will consist
of thanksgiving, or that he will offer an animal sacrifice as an
act of thanksgiving. It is likely that the former is the meaning
here. And if the two halves of the parallelism in this verse are
mutually completing, then the meaning could be boiled down to
this: Thankful prayers will be the sacrifice that I will offer
continually to you.]
====
John 1:2 He [(that is the One I am calling ‘the
Word’)] existed in the beginning with God.
5 [That//The] light shines in the
darkness,
and the
darkness can never extinguish it.
13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth
[which is the result of//resulting from] human passion or plan, but
a birth that comes from God.
14 So the Word became human and made his home
among us. He was full of unfailing love and [He is worthy of being
fully believed//faithfulness].e And we have seen his glory, the glory of the
Father’s one and only Son.
16 From [the abundance of Him who we call ‘the
Word’//his abundance] we have all received one gracious blessing
after another.
17 For the
law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and [true
teachings that are worthy of full belief//faithfulness] came
through [Christ Jesus//Jesus Christ].
[Verse 14 and 17 represent quite a challenge
for the translator. The word ‘truth’ in Greek should be taken to
mean the same thing in both verses. I think the translators desired
to find one word that would work here, but I feel that
‘faithfulness’ shifts the meaning from what John
intended.]
19
This was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders sent priests and
Temple assistants from Jerusalem to ask John, “[Whose place are you
claiming to fulfill?//Who are you?]”
20
He came right out and said, “I am not the
Messiah.”
21“Well then, [whose place are you taking?//who
are you?]” they asked. “Are you [taking Elijah’s
place//Elijah]?”
“No,” he replied.
“Are
you the Prophet we are expecting?”
“No.”
22
“Then [who gave you any authority to work like this?//who are
you?] We need an answer for those who sent us. What do you
have to say about yourself?”
23
John replied in the words of the prophet
Isaiah:
“I am [the/a]
voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Clear the way for the LORD’s
coming!’”
31[Before now] I did not recognize him as the
Messiah, but I have been baptizing with water so that he might be
revealed to Israel.”
33 I
didn’t know he was the one, but when God sent me to baptize with
water, he told me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and
rest [upon, He] is the one who will baptize with the Holy
Spirit.’
34 I
saw this happen to Jesus, so I testify that he is [God’s Chosen
One.//the Chosen One of God.]”
45
Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the
very [one/person] Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is
Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
50
Jesus [responded//asked him], “Do you believe this just because I
told you I had seen you under the fig tree? You will see greater
things than this.”
[I
don’t think we use ‘asked’ to introduce rhetorical questions in
English. And Greek doesn’t use this verb
either.]
51
Then he said, “I tell you the truth, you will all see [“]heaven
open and the angels of God going up and down on[” Me,] the Son of
Man, the one who is the stairway between heaven and
earth.
[It
is often necessary in other languages to include ‘I/Me’, because in
most languages one just doesn’t talk of oneself using the third
person, he. This is not grammatical in most languages.]
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.