Article March 13, 1937 Issue

Bible Notes

"I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed" (Isa. 43:12)—The verb here translated "I have shewed" means literally "I have caused ... to hear," and so "I have proclaimed" or "made proclamation" (cf. Brown, Driver, Briggs: Hebrew Lexicon, p. 1034). Smith translates: "I foretold, and I saved, I announced;" while Moffatt has: "'Twas I who promised to save, I who fulfilled what I foretold."

"There was no strange god among you" (Isa. 43:12)—The Hebrew word "zar," here translated "strange god," means literally "foreign or strange," but is occasionally used in the Old Testament to represent the phrase "'el zar" (foreign god), that is, a supposed deity other than the "God of Israel," whom the chosen people worshiped.

"At the sea" (Ps. 106:7)—The Septuagint gives the rendering, "going up." This variation is easily explained when we remember that originally Hebrew was written without vowels and without any division between the words. The Hebrew text as we have it today has two words which mean literally "at the-sea"; but the translators who prepared the Greek Version clearly read these two words as one, so forming a word of entirely different meaning, a participle which is correctly translated "going-up."

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