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Summary: Two neglected areas of a word's meaning are 'personal' and 'spiritual'.
They need to be recognised, formally, as primary not secondary dimensions of
meaning. Only in scripture can this become obvious.
A Greek preposition (I'm using 'en' and related ones as an example), for instance,
will routinely be given...
•a place meaning as its primary one -- a physical visible picture, like 'inside' or
'upon'.
It will routinely be given
•a 'motion' meaning, like 'towards the inside' or 'away from' -- still quite
imaginable as a picture --
and
•a time meaning -- less visible -- like 'during' or 'at',
plus some
•specially named meanings (instrumental; agentive), like 'with, by, through',
and even some
•'extended' and 'figurative' meanings like 'intensively so' 'of a higher rank
than'
When God dwells 'in' heaven, we think of a place, or even a time, such as the
future reality, eternity, but we don't even imagine that it is telling us that
'heaven' is a person, a presence of God, wherever and whenever 'heaven'
appears.
Only when God talks to us do we even suspect that He, as the author and giver of
language, has more on His mind than we have on ours. When we write, we write
about things of the world we know. When He writes, He tells us of the worlds we
don't know -- and that turns out to be, not about lost physical dimensions, but
about lost spiritual dimensions. He is concerned with live, moral people, not with
the nuts and bolts of physics.
Since the mystery of reality is ultimately personal, we have been found to be over-
robotic in analysing the languages of God!
You could teach the place-meaning to a monkey, and the time-
meaning to a child, but why expect anything other than a person-
meaning, as the prime intention, from a Bible dictionary? Scripture is
after all a love-letter from God. How much more personal can you get?
We can semantically split the 'person' (even of God) into innumerable semantic
sub-categories of 'mind, body, soul and spirit', without recognising the heart of
God; always thinking in tangible 'realities' as best we can, and missing the person,
the personality, the heart-intention.
Examples:
'Heavens and Earth' refers to covenants of God. [You will find the explanation
in our commentary]
The 'elements' disappearing in fire refers to God judging false religion. [The
reference is spiritual]
'All creation' refers to every man, every person. [God is clear in His focus]
'The earth will shake' refers to the land (the people in it) being judged by God.
[We should not be so physical about a spiritual message]
Whole phrases, idioms and sets of phrases need adequate definitions, as a matter
of course.
##Look for the personal aspect to meaning and you can translate more
accurately.
Take as a nitty-gritty example, the personal meanings of the standard Greek cases
(nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative).
John avoids putting the origin of Christ into the accusative case or passive
construction.
For example, to say 'In the beginning was the Word' is a bad translation into
English word order of John's choice of case.
It puts God in the passive position in relation to the verb, as if to say 'he was
made'.
To translate it instead as, 'In the beginning the Word was' puts the Word into the
active position in English, and into the superior case (nominative), as it is in
Greek. The interpretation is as if 'He made Himself', or 'existed', or 'actively came
into being' before anything else.
Jesus gets put into the accusative of shame when he is playing the submissive
role.
E.g.
2Co 5:21 Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we
might become the righteousness of God in him.
'He made him sin' is a double accusative. The personal accusative, Jesus
crucified, is of like shame to the objective accusative, sin.
E.g.
Joh 8:28 Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then
shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as the Father
taught me, I speak these things.
The Bible also brings to the fore the related personal meanings of community
and intimate unity in a way no other book can. Many 'brotherhoods' steal the
unity idea, and several make it 'family'-like, but I know of none which go the
whole Biblical way of picturing the intimate closeness of Christ and his church as
a 'husband and wife'. We are re-made into his image.
The 'group' meanings are mostly lost due to our individualistic evangelical
outlook; So we need to re-learn that the 'calling' to the saving 'faith' by 'baptism'
and 'heart-circumcision', are singulars (not 'my calling; my faith; my baptism;
my heart-circumcision' but his, now ours), in the same way as 'your (plural) body
(singular)' speaks of us as individually members of one church, and one spirit
with one Lord and husband. Therefore re-consider your (plural) calling (singular)
brethren (group). We (one group) are 'co-heirs' (one group) to one throne.
Rom 6:3-6 Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him through
baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have
become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the
likeness of his resurrection; 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with
him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in
bondage to sin;
Col 2:11 in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with
hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;
Lets take the Biblical idea of 'collective number' one step deeper than non-
Biblical language will. When God says 'come ye to me', He takes it more seriously
than a cut-throat gang sworn to mutual defence. He becomes us, for practical
purposes. 'I in them and they in me; he is over all and through all and in all and is
all in all'. You know the talk, but may never have found its sense.
Nowhere is the intimately close and personal identification of the caller and the
called more strikingly obvious as when Jesus says to the arch-persecutor of the
Christians, Saul, on the road to Damascus, 'Why are you persecuting me?', or
when he will repeat to the nations on judgement day, 'You gave me no food and
drink and comfort'. This underlines the over-riding primary meaning of talk. It is
not about bodies or sex or water or doctrines or grammar -- God-speak is all
about true love that would lay down God's life for yours.
## When Jesus says 'This evil race', we think (physically) 'he is being Anti-
Semitic', but Jesus, talking spiritually, talking as God, intended to convey: 'This
brood of vipers, this evil and adulterous generation, begotten of the Serpent'.
## When John says The Light coming into the world was Life and Truth and
Grace, we 'know' he is talking 'figuratively', as if He were twisting language. But
3500 years of public, written prophecy ought to prove that God always intended
to refer to the spirit of true prophecy. It is we who must be the ones always
twisting meaning to something unintended by God.
Hag 2:6 For thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will
shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;...
[This was spoken to real people in long-ago history building a real temple and
expecting God to act in their time. We are all still waiting for the real
fulfilment]
..9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith
Jehovah of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts.
[This part of the prophecy is still not apparent]
The actual history then, saw the rebuilding as predicted, but not as prophesied...
Zec 2:4 and said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem
shall be inhabited as villages without walls, by reason of the multitude of men
and cattle therein.
Jerusalem was repopulated at that time, but it didn't turn out quite like that.
Some time later they were still refusing to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, because
of the prophecy. Nehemiah, guided by God, received better sense...
Neh 2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the evil case that we are in, how
Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and
let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.
God does not allow quick fulfilment, but leaves prophecy only partly fulfilled. We
call it 'Hidden meaning' 'Deceptive' 'Deep' 'second fulfilment', but how many
millennia do we need to tumble to the simple fact that prophecy won't be finally
and fully accomplished until the End? Paul told us 2000 years ago! It is another
case of missing the primary intention of God's language, by reason of modelling it
upon our own.
These are not 'idiomatic' usages of language, as if 'unusual and perverse'. They
are the real meanings. Language is from God, certainly the Bible is, and language
from God is spiritual. There is no greater influence on our thinking, practices and
world-view than scripture. It is not to be put into the 'idiomatic; idiosyncratic'
basket.
Such a dictionary and translation already lives in our hearts and minds as we
struggle to listen to God and His words. The experts hate to grapple with the very
soft edges of personal and spiritual meanings, and will not easily formally include
them; but we, as people, not robots, all need to nurture a heart which will listen
for what God would really have us alive to.