Article January 3, 1976 ISSUE

Words of Current Interest

Related to the Lesson-Sermon for January 11, 1976, in the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE QUARTERLY Subject: Sacrament

Ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness (Isa. 58:4)

The prophet comments on religious and ethical conditions in Palestine in postexilic times, probably late in the sixth century B.C. Popular indifference was later counteracted by Ezra and Nehemiah, who revitalized the religion of Israel. The New English Bible translates the verse, "Since your fasting leads only to wrangling and strife and dealing vicious blows with the fist, on such a day you are keeping no fast that will carry your cry to heaven."

Make fat thy bones (Isa. 58:11)

Holladay remarks that the Hebrew word for bones can also connote totality of being, identity, perception. The essence of "fatness" in this context seems to be strength.

They...shall build the old waste places (Isa. 58:12)

Some parts of the Holy Land had been devastated by invaders and lay in ruins throughout the Exile. The New English Bible translates, "The ancient ruins will be restored by your own kindred and you will build once more on ancestral foundations..."

He called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve... apostles (Luke 6:13)

Here Luke makes a clear distinction between "disciple," which means student in general, and "apostle," which means one sent out (as a delegate or ambassador). In the Gospels all Jesus' students —and in Acts all Christian believers—are called "disciples." "Apostle" is generally used in the New Testament to denote one of the Twelve chosen by Jesus—or Paul, who, on the basis of his vision on the Damascus road, accounted himself as truly "sent" as any of the Twelve. Apostellein is the verb used by Luke (10:1 ) for the sending out of the seventy disciples to heal and preach.

There went virtue out of him, and healed them all (Luke 6:19)

The King James Version preserves the early meaning of the word "virtue" as "power" (from the Latin vir and virtus—"man," "manliness"). The Greek text has dunamis—"power, strength, ability."

The Lesson-Sermons contain Bible references (King James Version) and correlative passages from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

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