Article January 25, 1936 Issue

Bible Notes

"Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Luke 6:36)—On the evidence of a number of the earliest and most authoritative manuscripts of the New Testament, including the Sinaitic, Vatican, and Bezan Codices, the qualifying word "therefore" is omitted from the Revised Version and other modern translations of this verse. Thus Weymouth has: "Be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate;" and Goodspeed: "You must be merciful, just as your Father is."

"Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" (Jer. 31:3)— The Hebrew verb "mashak" (draw) can also mean "to draw out," and so "to prolong, or, continue;" hence the rendering, "I have prolonged kindness unto thee" (Brown, Driver, Briggs: Hebrew Lexicon, p. 604), also, "Therefore have I continued lovingkindness" (margin of the Revised Version); and, "Therefore have I extended lovingkindness" (margin of the Authorized Version). Moffatt, however, translates: "So now I draw you gently home;" Smith: "Therefore with kindness will I draw you to me;" and Kent: "Therefore with love have I drawn thee."

"The covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jer. 31:32)—Scholars contend that the Hebrew phrase literally rendered "the day" "cannot be limited to the period actually following the Exodus from Egypt, but includes the wandering in the wilderness" (Binns: Jeremiah, p. 74; cf. Streane: Jeremiah, p. 55). If this view be accepted, it would seem that the "new covenant," with its inward or spiritual law (Jer. 31:33), is contrasted primarily with the covenant of the moral law, given to Moses at Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:29) when he received "the words of the covenant, the ten commandments" (Ex. 34:28).

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