Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.-Psa. 104:26. Does it not seem remarkable that the Psalmist, in the midst of the rehearsal of the works of God, should introduce a work of man 9— “There go the ships.” Is there just ground for the supposition that by ships are intended fleets of the little nautilus (“which spread their thin oar and catch the driving gale”), creatures of God? Vers. 27-29 seem to exclude the idea of ships being meant. C.J.D.
A.-No doubt the allusion to “the ships” in ver. 26 is a singular and notable introduction, between the marine creatures small and great before, and the one specified after. But the reference has all the more force. The ships glided majestically, and are ever an object of interest to the observer; while the bulky creatures that played within its waters did not escape notice, though not so continuously. “Moving things countless” naturally led from living creatures of the deep to the ships which made their way visibly across the sea. Even they for the purposes of those concerned (and how wide these interests all over the world!) were as dependent on God's care as any of its objects which the Psalm contemplates from the heavens, and the earth, the mountains, the valleys, the springs, the grass and the herb, the wine, oil, and bread, the birds and the wild-goats, the sun and the moon, the monarch of wild beasts and the monarch of creation, before the great and wide sea comes before us.
On the other hand the Nautilus, interesting as it is, presents no such conspicuous object on the sea. Here and there it may abound as in the warm waters of the Pacific and the Australian Oceans, and off the coasts of Asia and Africa and some of their islands. But even so they make no show on the smallest scale comparable to “the ships;” they are as a snail on land compared with the house of man. So rare was the sight of one at sea, that the scientists say “the recovery of this interesting animal was reserved for a British voyager (Mr. G. Bennett, who describes its capture on 24 Aug., 1829, in his “Wanderings in N.S. Wales,” &c) It struck them as “like a small dead tortoise-shell cat”; and this being so unusual a sight there led to the sending the boat, alongside at the time, to ascertain its nature. Is it conceivable that genus Nautilus of the first Fam. Nautilidae, of Order B. Tentaculifera of D'Orbigny [Prof. Owen's Tetrabranchiata] of the Cephalopoda, should be here meant? “The ships” are an exception, but one so graphic as to fall naturally into this wonderful picture around man as its center according to God: no sufficient reason appears to warrant their exclusion.
Q.—John 8:1-11. Is this story a gloss, as so many of the learned reckon, or is it of God? L. L.
A.-When celibacy was an idol, we can understand how unacceptable were the Lord's words. Even Augustine attributed its omission to infirm or no faith. Yet bearing in mind that our earliest copies are of that age, we see marks proving a willful omission, with ample testimony to its existence. But the Christian can recognize the Shepherd's voice, such as no forger ever invented, and can note that the fact supplies the occasion for the discourse that follows, as in chaps. 4; 5; 6, which otherwise would deprive chap. 8 of its analogous starting-point. Beyond just question it is of God.
Q.-Does not ξύλον, tree, and σταυρὸς, imply not the traditional form of a cross, but rather a pole or stake? L. L.
A. The “tree” was rather generic; and even the Jews used it as a sign of curse and degradation, after killing the evil-doer. The “cross,” as more specific, sometimes applied to impaling, at others to suspending the body from the middle, but still more widely to proper crucifixion by nailing the sufferer to an upright beam with a transverse to which the stretched arms were fastened. So the inspired description proves it was in our Lord's case; where there was also an elongation of the central board, bearing over the head the memorable words which Pilate wrote to the dire offense of the Jews. Its form then resembled, not an X as some fancy, but a T with that headpiece surmounting the center of the cross-beam, pretty near what is generally conceived.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.-1. Job 22:30. What is the meaning of the first clause?
2. Job 39:13. Can the peacock be meant here? Q.
A.-1. There is no “island” expressed in either the Sept. or Vulgate, which removes one difficulty. But Schultens seems to have perceived first that the word so translated is a negative, as we see in Ichabod. That sense therefore is quite opposed by those two ancient versions, and it should run thus: “Him that is not guiltless shall He deliver: yea, he shall be delivered by the pureness of thy hands.”
2. The A.V. is far from a correct representation. The peacock seems first known, even to Israel in the days of Solomon, and the name is Indian Hebraized. It is the ostrich which is really in the first clause, contrasted with the stork in the second. “The wing of the ostrich flappeth joyously (or, rejoiceth): but hath she the stork's pinion and plumage?” This the Revisers considered a figure, in order perhaps to smooth the connection with what follows, and say “are her pinions and feathers kindly” (and in the margin, “like the stork's”). But assuredly the peacock is not meant here, a bird more striking for its splendid tail when expanded, which does not enter into the description given; whereas the ostrich, unlike the stork for power of flight, runs with the utmost rapidity, and is devoid of that parental fondness which characterizes the stork. The same ancient versions are vague enough.
Q.-Hab. 2:2. What is the true bearing of the last clause? There seems some confusion in the quotation of it that one almost invariably hears. Is the Synopsis or Dr. Pusey right in their view? They say that “he who runs may read it,” i.e. that it was to be written so plain as to be read by the hasty glance of one that hurried by. Is it really so? Q.
A.-There can hardly be a doubt that most versions are right, but the commentators wrong, even those who have rendered the Hebrew correctly. The translation of Isaac Leeser, generally correct, is here faulty and in accord with the common mistake, “that every man may read it fluently.” Is the misunderstanding due to the influence of popular misquotation? For the word is written plainly, not “that he who runs may read it,” but “that he who readeth it may run” —just the opposite. The inference may be merely that the reader need not stop; but may it not be the more worthy one of earnestly pursuing the work of making known the revealed purpose of Jehovah for others also to profit thereby? When the crisis comes, as we are told by another prophet, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge (surely of a spiritual and higher sort than of the stars or of the fossils, of chemistry or of electricity) shall be increased. Assuredly the need of that is as great as it is all-important.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.-1 John 5:20. The article before “eternal life” in this verse is said not to have authority sufficient to retain it in the Greek. What difference does the presence or absence of the article make for this passage? In the controversy during recent years on “life eternal” I have seen it stated, that the absence of the article here renders this passage to mean that “life eternal” is “characteristic” of Christ, not that He is personally “the life eternal.” INQUIRER.
A.-In 1 John 5:20 the oldest and best authority excludes the article before “life eternal.” But it is only a novice in zeal for his notion that could thence infer that the phrase is characteristic and not objective. For the article before “the true God” is passed on by the connective particle to “life eternal” also according to a well-known principle of its usage. “The true God and life eternal” are thus bound up with our Lord Jesus Christ in the striking way peculiar to this Epistle, which combines God with Him, or as here with life eternal. The case therefore is not only an oversight, but a cogent proof against those who would separate them. Had the article been repeated before “life,” it would have made them distinct objects, the very thing which the apostle avoided. The opening chapter 1(ver. 2) is most emphatic in predicating objective reality of “the life eternal,” both with the Father before He became flesh, and when He was thus manifested. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” especially for such as hastily seize a superficial appearance in questions so grave and momentous, where truth and safety are found only in entire subjection to the written word.
Q.-Col. 1:18, Head of the body. Is there any ground for deducing from J.N.D.'s French Version, that he by “chef” denied Christ to be “head,” and made Him only “chief”? A.V.
A.-Those who talk thus have no other ground for their notion, than their own will to lower Christ, along with ignorance of the French language, which treats “tête” in this connection as antique and prefers “chef” in the same sense as its substitute. The real word in the context for “chief” is “first-born,” both in creation (ver. 15), and in new creation (ver. 18). But the word employed by the Spirit of God in this last verse for “head,” “head of the body,” means this and nothing else; and Mr. D. never allowed a thought of anything short of it. Nor could any one familiar with his writings or oral teaching have the least question about it. The indulgence of such baseless speculation, both as to his faith and yet more seriously as to scripture, betrays the spirit of error in opposition to the Spirit of truth.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.-John 1:1, 2; 17:3, &c. What scripture would you bring in support of the deity of Christ?
1. John 17:3 refers to the “Father” as “the only true God.” A man belonging to the “Faith” sect points out that John 1 makes a distinction between “the word was with God” (should be “the God”), whereas “the word was God” (is not “the God"); and that this prevents him from accepting the statement that Jesus is God in the full sense that the Father is the true God as in John 17
2. I don't understand Greek, but I notice the verse in the R. V. is weakened by the margin “thy throne O God is,” &c. (Heb. 1) which you have quoted in a back number of T. N. & O. in support of the deity of Christ.
3. What answer would you give to those who dismiss the reality of the mount of transfiguration scene, and its proof in favor of the present conscious existence of Moses and Elias, by stating it is only a “vision”? What about “the heavenly vision”?
4. A “Faith” man argued that “the kingdom” and “Paradise” are the same or similar as “When thou comest into Thy kingdom,” with “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” In proof of it, he pointed out that man in Paradise was set over the works of God's hands, and that Paradise was the kingdom, or the beginning of it. QUERIST.
A.-The very first chapter of the first Gospel proves Jesus to be not only the Messiah genealogically, but God and Jehovah. He is Emmanuel, or God with us (Isa. 7); and He should save His people, Jehovah's people, from their sins. He could say, “Before Abraham was (came into being), I am,” the ever being One, or, as in the Revelation, the Alpha and the Omega, First and Last, the Beginning and the End. He was, is, and ever shall be God. No Christian doubts but affirms that He, the Word and Son, became man, but also that He was eternally God. True Christianity depends on His person, as His word assures us who believe; and the denial of it will be, for those guilty of it, their perdition no less righteous than true. So in Rom. 9:5 Christ is declared to be over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
1. As the Father is the true God, so is the Son (1 John 5:20); and we might add the Holy Spirit also. This is proved of the three Persons, if we compare Isa. 6 with John 12:41, and Acts 28:25-27: all the truth, and grace, and glory pertain to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, alike God and Jehovah.
The “faith sect” must be a burlesque of faith, a school of nothing but unbelief. The man referred to understands Greek no better than Querist who owns his ignorance honestly. For the distinction in John 1:1 has nothing to do with the alleged difference, but only with the predicative usage, which in Greek requires the absence of the article, as every scholar knows.
2. Psa. 45:6, 7 is expressly cited by the inspired writer of Heb. 1:8, 9, as proving the Son to be God as well as man.
3. The Transfiguration scene had for its object to give a living sample of the Son of man's future kingdom to the three chosen witnesses; and, as its still more important effect, to make known the glory of Jesus as the Son of the Father, before whom the great representatives of the Law and the Prophets vanish; “hear ye Him.” That Moses and Elijah have “present conscious existence” required no such a display; they were like the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and indeed not only all saints, but all souls of men. God is not God of dead but of living; for all live unto Him. “But I say to you, my friends, Fear not those that kill the body, and after this have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom ye shall fear: Fear him who after he hath killed hath authority to cast into hell; yea, I say to you, Fear him.” It is to trifle with Him, when any essay to treat the Transfiguration, or the apostle's “heavenly vision,” as unreal. God is not mocked.
4. The unbeliever's argument, if so be it can be called, to identify “the kingdom” with “paradise” is mere trash and confusion, and not even the least bit of sound reasoning. The Lord that day entered paradise, and so did the saved robber. The Kingdom will be at His coming. The paradise of Adam was ruined by sin; the paradise of the second Man and last Adam stands in the righteousness of God, and was open that very day to him that had faith in Jesus. Of Him spoke Psa. 8 prophetically, not retrospectively of the first man that fell.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q—1. Gen. 1:16. Why the “two great lights” mentioned in the fourth day's work, seeing that the sun is really the center of our planetary system? and how could it have been dark (ver. 2) if the sun was then in existence?
Q—2. Gen. 1:29, 30; 2:16; 3:18. By comparing the sustenance of man and beast in Gen. 1:29, 30; 2:16, with 3:18, does it not seem as if man was reduced to level of beasts in the field— “thou shalt eat the herb of the field” —and after that it goes on to say “dust thou art, &c.?”
Q—3. Gen. 3:15. What is the meaning of “thy seed” (the devil's seed), and of “thy seed and her seed?”
Q—4. Luke 4:18. What lesson is to be learned from the insertion of “recovering of sight to the blind” in Luke 4:18 though absent from Isa. 61:1? E.N.
A.—1. The two “great lights” were constituted as they still are (not created then) in relation to the earth prepared for man, like the work of all the six days. The dense darkness that prevailed in the chaotic state which preceded these days easily accounts for the gloom, though the sun, moon and stars were already in existence since God created the heavens and the earth, which took place, it may be, ever so long before the great geologic ages previous to the Adamic race. Not that scripture is occupied with these material processes; but it leaves ample room before the first day in ver. 3.
A.—2. There was no “reducing” man to fruit and vegetable as his early food till the deluge, when animal fare was allowed with prohibition of the blood with good and holy reason assigned. Man enjoyed even before far beyond “beasts of the field.” Yet even so through sin his body is as reducible to the dust as any beast's. But why omit that he only has a soul immortal (for good or for ill) through the inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim He only was, solemnly in divine council, made “in our image, after our likeness”; the most distinct separateness from, and elevation above, every other creature on earth. Why lose sight of this?
A.—3. Can there be conceived a weightier announcement, after sin had entered with death ensuing, than Jehovah Elohim made in pronouncing the curse on the Serpent? “I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.” While countless souls are by grace associated for all blessing and triumph with the woman's seed, One is marked out, on Whom all the blessed of similar seed depend, Who should suffer the deepest anguish, yet live (again, as we can add) to crush him who was the liar and the murderer from the beginning, and all who, refusing grace, perpetuate the enmity of Satan.
A.—4. It would seem that the Seventy, who translated the O. T. into Greek, added here from elsewhere in the prophet Isaiah, another beneficent fruit of Messiah's presence and power, the bestowal of sight on the blind. Dean Alford in his note to this text refers to Isa. 58:6. If this be correctly represented, it is hard to discover the link literally or spiritually. It may be more simply and fairly referred to Isa. 35:5, where the sense is the same, though the words differ. Luke cites here and elsewhere from the Septuagint. No other lesson seems intended.
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—1. Heb. 8:3. How are we to understand the last clause? What has our Great High Priest in heaven now to offer, seeing He had previously on the Cross offered Himself?
Q.—2. Is there any scriptural warrant for the statement that the Lord Jesus offered or presented the church to the Father on the day of Pentecost? W.G.
A.—1. I presume that the Great Priest offered the greatest gift ever presented or presentable to God, Himself dead and risen representing not His person only but His infinite work on the cross.
A.—2. I see no warrant in scripture for His offering the church to the Father on the day of Pentecost. Such a thought ought not to be uttered without the word of God unambiguously for it. Why should Christians who have the whole revealed mind of God indulge in any fancy of their own?
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—Heb. 10:25. 1. Is it correct that this verse refers to other than the Lord's Supper and prayer meeting for exhortation?
2. Does not Pliny's well-known letter give the idea that in early days, believers met together daily, and that at the commencement of the day, to commend themselves to the care of Christ? The practice now seems to be to meet at the close of the long day's work, when all freshness is gone. The reason adduced seems to be “convenience,” but should this reason be admitted?
3. In apostolic times were there set meetings for prayer, for scripture study, etc., when it was considered wrong to deviate from a fixed motive? or is it that whenever the saints were assembled together there was absolute liberty either to praise, pray or exhort? X.
A.—1. It is true that the passage in Heb. 10 does not specify the gathering together for the Lord's Supper; but it in no way excludes exhortation from that great occasion. This is manifest from Acts 20:7. The prime call was to remember the Lord in the breaking of bread. Yet the apostle was not the one to violate divine order when he not only “discoursed” (not “preached"), but in view of his departure on the morrow prolonged the discourse till midnight. No doubt in 1 Corinthians the Lord's Supper is treated in chap. 11 before and independently of the interior working of the assembly in chap. 14, or even of its animating power in the presence and operation of the Holy Spirit in chap. 12. There might be but “two or three"; and the grace of the Lord provides for even so few who might not be endowed with any marked charisma for public activity. If man would have overlooked such little ones, God did not; and hence, gift or no gift, we have the Lord's Supper a section complete before the Holy Spirit's presence and action begins. But this was in no way to exclude His working there and then both ordinarily and extraordinarily as in the case of the apostle just named, and recorded for our profit to guard us from all narrowness, where it might be called for as at Troas. The principle is, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). Not even the deep solemnity with thanksgiving proper to the Lord's Supper excludes prolonged discourse in especial circumstances, as scripture proves. Again, the highest form of gift in the assembly does not only speak to God in prayer and praise and blessing, but to men in edification and encouragement and consolation as the Holy Spirit might guide in His perfect knowledge of present need to God's glory. Thus should all things be done to edification, but comelily and with order, of which scripture is careful.
2. Pliny in writing to Trajan does not speak, of a daily meeting but of one before dawn “on a stated day,” no doubt “the Lord's day,” though Justin Martyr may be the first outside scripture to describe it more fully still. It is as clear that at Troas the meeting was late in the day or in the evening, and on this occasion prolonged till midnight. This is mere detail and left for observance according to a gracious arrangement for the best according to circumstances; just as no stress was laid on the kind of bread, whatever was the fact on the original institution of the Lord's Supper. Certain minds always tend to formalism—the reverse of Christianity.
3. Besides the gathering of the assembly to remember the Lord and to edify one another in the Spirit, there were set occasions for “the prayers” from the first, as we read in Acts 2:42 generally, and in Acts 12:12 particularly. There is thus room for all that is edifying; whilst the fact of the special object “to break bread” or “to pray” indicates the wisdom of adhering as the rule in each to its own character prominently. Why should anyone seek to break this down by narrowing, or to broaden what scripture lays down?
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.—An evangelical clergyman was preaching in the open air and spoke of Jesus as pouring out His Godhead on the cross (“My God, my God, why” &c.). Surely that cannot be a right application of the scripture. X.Y.Z.
A —If the Evangelical said as is reported, he uttered folly; and if he understood his own words, he was heterodox. Probably he knew not what he said, carried away by the desire to make known the infinite humiliation of our Lord on the cross. But He emptied Himself of the glory proper to a divine Person; He could no more cease to be God, than we to be men; and had it been possible, it would have deprived both His life and death of that which makes each infinitely acceptable to God and efficacious for us.