Handling Accurately or Teaching Straight?

In my Greek class last week, we had a discussion about the word ὀρθοτομέω (orthotomeo) in 2 Timothy 2:15. Here's a quick overview of how several translations render the end of that verse:

NIV: correctly handles the word

NASB: accurately handling the word

NLT: correctly explains the word

NET Bible marginal note: "correctly handling" or "imparting it without deviation"

NAB: imparting the word... without deviation

The Message: laying out the truth plain and simple

Translations vary because orthotomeo is a metaphorical word referring to cutting straight. Is the emphasis on accurate workmanship? (NIV, NASB, most others) or on straight cutting, meaning without deviating to irrelevant teaching? (NAB, The Message).

Here are two reasons why I am starting to favor the sense of "without deviation."

1) Orthotomeo is used in LXX Prov 3:6 and 11:5 to refer to cutting a straight path - a path that does not meander. The word is not used elsewhere in the NT or LXX.

2) The context of 2 Tim 2:15 includes both warning against incorrect teaching and against pointless teaching. However, one of Paul's key warnings in the entire passage is against pointless speculation: "warn them not to argue about words" "avoid worldly and empty chatter" "refuse foolish and ignorant speculations".

If that is how Paul is using the metaphor, then his point is that teaching in the church needs to stick to the big important ideas and not get distracted into speculation, pointless debate, or error.

The picture: a fresco of Paul from a tomb believed by some to hold his actual remains. It is the oldest painting of Paul, and the sarcophagus contains bone fragments from the first or second century.

The Difference Between Grace and Mercy

Question: What is the difference between grace and mercy?

When I was growing up in church, I used to hear the saying, "Mercy is when you don't get what you deserve, and grace is when you get what you don't deserve." The idea was that mercy is withholding deserved punishment, and grace is an undeserved gift. In recent years, I have heard people say that when you first fail, you need grace, but if you continue to fail, then you need mercy.

Both ideas roughly represent what modern people mean when they say mercy or grace in English. But the Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and so those definitions are not adequate when we read the Bible, although they aren't completely wrong, either.

So before we get simple, we'll have to get a little complicated. Words in all languages change their meaning depending on their context. For example, in English, the word head can refer to a leader, a bathroom on a ship, the froth on beer, a high peninsula, or many other things depending on the context. Grace and mercy in the biblical languages are no different - they have different meanings depending on the context.

Grace in the Old Testament: Grace is the translation of the Hebrew cheyn, meaning favor. Two good examples are "But Noah found grace / favor in the eyes of the Lord" (Gen 6:8) and "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace / favor to the humble" (Prov 3:34). In these sorts of passages, cheyn refers to God (or people) being favorably disposed to do good things for someone.

Grace in the New Testament: Grace is the translation of the Greek charis. The basic sense of charis is a gift, or the generosity that inspires that gift. So when Paul says, "For by grace you are saved through faith..." (Eph 2:8), we can say that it is by God's sheer generosity that we receive the gift of salvation (for more on charis, see this post).

Mercy in the OT and in the Gospels: Mercy translates the Hebrew chesed (in the OT) and the Greek eleos and oiktirmos (in the NT). Mercy, like compassion, is when we see someone in need and respond with both pity and action. The blind man of Jericho cried out to Jesus for mercy, because he was in great need (Luke 18:38-39). The Samaritan is described as merciful because he helped the injured traveller (Luke 10:37). Giving to the poor is an act of mercy (eleemosune, Matt 6:2-4). When Jesus blessed the merciful (Matt 5:7), he was talking about people who respond with pity and action to those in need.

Mercy in Paul's letters: Paul usually uses mercy in the same way as the Gospels and the OT. But sometimes, Paul uses the word mercy to describe God's forgiveness of our sins (Rom 11:30-32, 1 Tim 1:13). This is closely related to the meaning of mercy in the rest of the Bible. If we see the hungry, showing mercy means feeding them; when God sees sinners, showing mercy means providing forgiveness.

So, what's the simple answer to the question? Grace and mercy are not totally different; both attributes are at work when God saves us. It is mercy because God sees our desperate need and acts out of pity. It is grace because God gives salvation generously. But we need to be careful not to see mercy and grace as only gifts from God. God expects us to give mercy by helping those in need, and to be gracious by being generous with all that we have.

The picture: Noah's Ark, by Peter Spier. One of my sons loved this book. The first page begins "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," and the last page shows Noah planting a vineyard. One day he asked me if God liked grapes. I said I was sure he did, but why did he ask? He answered, "Because Noah found grapes in the eyes of the Lord."

More on Good Eye / Bad Eye (Matthew 6:22-23)

In my last post, I explained that the "good eye" and "bad eye" of Matthew 6:22-23 likely refers to generosity and stinginess. Here's a little more on that topic. (Warning! Bible nerdiness alert!)

The word for "good" here is haplos, which can be translated as simple, single, sincere, healthy, or generous. While haplos does not occur elsewher in the NT, the cognate words haplous (same meaning) and haplotetos (sincerity, simplicity or generosity) occur ten times. In Rom 12:8, 2 Cor 8:2, 9:11, 9:13, and James 1:5, haplotetos has the meaning of generosity. In the others (2 Cor 1:12, 11:3, Eph 6:5, Col 3:22), it means sincerity or simplicity. The LXX uses the word twice to refer to generosity, in 1 Chron 29:17 and Prov 11:25. Since the surrounding context, Matthew 6:19-34, is about money, it seems better to see haplos as a reference to generosity.

The phrase "evil eye" (ophthalmos poneros) has much more certainty about its meaning, since it always means stingy or greedy (Deuteronomy 15:9, Proverbs 23:6, Proverbs 28:22, Matthew 20:15). In the OT, the Hebrew raa ayin (evil eye) is translated as selfish or stingy. (The LXX translates the phrase with baskanos, stingy, in Proverbs, but leaves it as poneuresetai ho ophthalmos sou, your eye does evil, in Deuteronomy, probably because Proverbs and Deuteronomy were translated by different translators.)

Not all gospels scholars agree exactly with this interpretation, although most mention it as a possibility. There seem to be two reasons to doubt. First, the saying has an exact parallel in Luke 11:34-36, and there the context is not about money, but rather is connected to another saying about light (although note the mention of greed in Luke 11:39). In many cases, Matthew and Luke arrange the same sayings of Jesus in different contexts, so some scholars feel that Jesus' good eye/bad eye saying was not necessarily originally about money. Second, although haplos can mean generous, the phrase haplos opthalmos is not found elsewhere, so its exact meaning cannot be confirmed. Some scholars suggest a meaning for eye here that approximates heart, or draws on Greek biological conceptions of how the eye works.

To be honest, despite the doubts of some gospels scholars, I think this one is a slam dunk. I think that the more well-known metaphorical phrase "evil eye" caused Jesus to coin a new phrase, "good eye." The phrase "good eye" already existed in Prov 22:9, but Jesus used haplos instead of agathos (Heb. tov), probably to create an image of health vs. sickness. Even if Matthew is the one who placed the saying in this context (which is not certain), it illustrates that Matthew thought that the saying was about money.

The hard part, as usual with the sayings of Jesus, is obedience. Being generous is often hindered or completely stopped by our slavery to "mammon" or our worry about our own needs.

The picture: The Sermon on the Mount, from Kurtze Postill Herrn Phillippi Melanthonis vber die Euangelia der furnemesten Fest, 1545. Courtesy of the Digital Image Archive, Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

Good Eye / Bad Eye (Matthew 6:22-23)

The following is a short article that I was asked to write for the January 2009 edition of New Hope magazine. It's aimed at a lay magazine audience, so it simplifies things a bit. I need help on the last paragraph - as it stands, it is too trite. Any suggestions?

Good Eye / Bad Eye
What I love most about being a professor at Pacific Rim Bible College is the opportunity to help young leaders learn how to better interpret and apply the Bible. Today in class, a student asked about a difficult passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “… if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23). What did Jesus mean?

It turns out that having a “good eye” or a “bad eye” was a common manner of speaking when Jesus taught. The phrase “bad eye” is often translated as “stingy” or “greedy” in other places in the Bible (Deuteronomy 15:9, Proverbs 23:6, Proverbs 28:22, Matthew 20:15). And the word for “good” in this verse is translated as “generous” in some other passages in the Bible (1 Chronicles 29:17, Romans 12:8, James 1:5). So Jesus was using the ordinary language of his day to point out how much better generosity is than stinginess.

If you read this whole section of Jesus’ sermon (Matthew 6:19-34), you can tell that Jesus is giving several key principles about handling our money. First, he tells us that an act of generosity is like making a deposit in heaven (6:19-21). Then he tells us that having a “good eye” (being generous) lights up our whole lives, while having a “bad eye” (being stingy) makes our whole lives dark (6:22-23). Next, he warns us that we must choose God as our master, not money (6:24). Finally, Jesus teaches us how to avoid worry so that we will use our money generously to advance God’s purposes (6:25-34).

We ended our discussion not only with a good Bible lesson, but also with a challenge: am I being generous with the resources God has given me? Do I have a “good eye” or a “bad eye?”

I'm looking forward to your comments and suggestions on the wording of the final paragraph.

A Toast to Lemuel's Mother

Yesterday my students asked me about an unusual (to say the least) proverb that seems to advocate getting drunk. Proverbs 31:6-7 says "Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to him whose life is bitter. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his trouble no more."

The difficulties are obvious. Scripture elsewhere warns against inebriation (Prov 20:1, 23:29-30; Isa 5:22, 28:7; Rom 13:13, and many others). Why would the Bible advise us to help poor people by tapping a keg?

As usual, context provides some answers. This part of Proverbs contains advice that King Lemuel's mother gave to him about conducting himself as king (Prov 31:1). In Prov 31:2-5, Lemuel's mom warns him about habits that will damage his kingship - wine and women. She points out that "It is not for kings to drink wine... for they will drink and forget what is decreed, and pervert the rights of all the afflicted." Lemuel's mom is saying that it doesn't make sense for a king to get drunk, because 1) drunkenness may make him forget his responsibility to the downtrodden, and 2) he is not suffering, so he doesn't even have a bad excuse for getting sloshed. They may need to forget, but Lemuel needs to remember.

So I suspect that Lemuel's mother is not advising getting tanked - she is pointing out that a king doesn't have any of the normal reasons for getting drunk. We might paraphrase Mrs. Lemuel's advice: "People who are suffering and poor drink to forget their suffering - but as the king, you are not suffering. The suffering and the poor will suffer even more if you drink to forget." Her point is not that getting pickled is a good idea for the poor. She is merely pointing out how foolish it is for the king to get drunk. Proverbs 31:6-7 cannot be read in isolation, but rather as a contrast to Proverbs 31:4-5.

There may be something else going on here. Lemuel's mom is very concerned for the poor: she warns Lemmy (I'm sure that's what she called him) that he must defend the rights of the poor and oppressed in Prov 31:5, 8, and 9. In vv. 6-7, she may be advising that instead of hoarding his wine, he should give it out as gifts to the needy (see Paul E. Koptak, NIV Application Commentary: Proverbs). Although the Bible condemns drunkenness, it never condemns drinking in moderation. In fact, good wine is often used as a mark of God's abundant blessing (see Deut 7:13, 11:14, 14:26, 15:14; Joel 2:19, 3:18 and many others). Think of Jesus' generous gift of high-class wine to the young couple who had run out in John 2:1-12.

By the way, the picture above is a depiction of wisdom, found in an illuminated manuscript from 1170. The top figure is Jesus, the source of wisdom. Below him is Lady Wisdom (as in Prov 8), and below her is Solomon, I think. I'm not sure of the other figures, although the one in armor is probably David, and a few others have the look of Moses, Abraham, James, and perhaps John.