Article October 5, 1935 Issue

Bible Notes

"If the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it" (Luke 10:6)—The Greek phrase "huios eirenes" means literally "a son of peace" (rather than "the son of peace"), and the words were sometimes employed idiomatically to mean "one worthy of peace" (cf. Thayer: Greek Lexicon, p. 182), or "one inclined to peace" (Plummer: St. Luke, p. 273). Compare the phrase "a son of hell" (Matt. 23:15, Revised Version). Consequently, we find in Luke 10:6: "if there is a lover of peace there" (Weymouth); "if anyone there is deserving of a blessing" (Twentieth Century New Testament); "if there is anyone there who loves peace" (Goodspeed); and, "If there is a soul there breathing peace, your peace will rest on him" (Moffatt).

"Zion, the city of our solemnities" (Isa. 33:20)—The word "moathim," here rendered "solemnities," is that employed in Genesis 1:14, and there translated "seasons"; and it was often used by the Jews with reference to special religious seasons or feast days; hence the rendering offered by the margin of the Revised Version: "the city of our 'set feasts.' " The Septuagint, however, evidently translating from a variant text, has: "the city Sion, our salvation"

"A tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken" (Isa. 33:20)—The vividness of the metaphor employed in this verse is more readily appreciated when we note that the term translated "tabernacle" is the regular Hebrew word for "tent"; hence the writer's references to the stability of the "stakes" (or "tent-pegs") and the strength of the "cords" (or "guy-ropes"). Moffatt translates: "a tent whose pegs are never to be pulled up, whose ropes are never to be rent."

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