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David O. Bales
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| David Bales brings a unique perspective to this In The Original: Insights From Greek And Hebrew For The Lectionary Passages. Along with teaching World Religions and Ethics, he also taught Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek. He was a pastor for 33 years, and has written four books and innumerable stories, sermons, and articles about the Bible and the Christian faith. His website is: dobales.com. |
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In The Original: Insights From Greek And Hebrew For The Lectionary Passages is SermonSuite's newest sermon help. Each week David O. Bales will provide preachers with at least one and usually two insights from the lectionary readings. He'll elucidate the Bible passage with information that only comes from one who reads (not just "looks up") the biblical languages. Continued reading of this column will:
1) Better equip you for preaching;
2) Deepen and broaden your understanding of the biblical message;
3) Motivate you to learn or review your Greek and Hebrew; and
4) Increase your love for God and others. |
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Thanksgiving
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Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Go through this text and note the "comings" and "goings." After you "come" into the land, "go" to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. "Go" to the priest, and so on. The comings and goings of the individual worshiper are parallel to the people of Israel from their start as a single family, through their exodus from Egypt, and finally their journey into Canaan. For a good deal of their history these folk had been nomads, traveling here and there and later they looked back to their early years of wandering as a special time with God.
Deuteronomy 26 insists that each worshiper in the future remember the wanderings of the past. They're to recall Jacob/Israel (the Aramean) and how his nomadic life ended in Egypt with his family. He's described in verse 5 as "wandering" (NRSV and NIV). The verb is 'abad in the simple (not the intensive or causative) tense. In this tense it occurs more than 100 times in the Hebrew scriptures. Depending on the context it can be translated, "become lost, go astray, be near to ruin, perish, be carried off, vanish." In 1 Samuel 9:3 animals have been "lost" or "strayed." When we conceive of a domesticated animal being "lost," we can understand how the word can also be translated "perish," because that almost certainly will happen. Psalm 1:6 notes that the way of the wicked will "perish." Various attempts to translate the participle 'abad in Deuteronomy 26:5 are: (an Aramean) "ailing" or "close to destruction."
From the time the Hebrews became a people, they'd been traveling, sometimes near death. They left Canaan as a family of nomads. When they, as a "nation," finally return to Canaan (v. 1), they are to recall how the LORD was with them and guiding them to their new land. They remember their perilous (v. 5) journeys by traveling yearly to a shrine and celebrating with thanksgiving....
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