Psalm 130 Continued

I mentioned two thoughts I had about Psalm 130. One was about the contrast between 'fear' and 'revere', which is a contrast I struggle with. I'm never sure what the proper reverence is. A struggle for another day, I think.

The other thought was about the word 'iniquity'. In verse 3 (NKJV) "If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?" Because I read too much fantasy, I actually know what the word mark means in this context. Yay. The NIV uses the phrase "keep a record of sins", which means more or less the same thing, but "mark iniquities" sounds so much cooler. HCSB - "considered sins", which is deeply meaningful in its own way, but not as poetic. The next time someone does something that annoys me I'm going to tell them (jokingly) that I've marked their iniquity.

My concordance on my phone tells me that 'mark' is a Hebrew word meaning "to hedge about (as with thorns)", which is really interesting. This word (Strongs H8104) also means "regard, observe, attend to", which is more of what I think of when I think of the word 'mark' or 'consider'. So I'd kind of mentally translated this as "Lord, if you weighed our sins against us, who could stand before you", which is of course the general idea. I really like the mental image of H8104 though, "Lord, if you used our iniquities as thorns to hem us in, who could stand/continue/abide/endure".

This brings me to 'iniquity', which actually is the word I wanted to consider (not 'mark'). According to the NKJV I have which has the concordance notes, it comes from a word meaning "bent or distorted". So in this case, the iniquity thing is like the fallen state of man, in the same sense as "if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but it is the sin (noun) that lives in me" (Romans 7:20 - HCSB, except for the 'noun', which I added).

Anyway, the whole point of this blog post, which I've only partly arrived at through a very wandering path, is the gospel, which is to say that because of Jesus, God doesn't hem us in, using our fallen state to make it so that we cannot endure. I feel like it's worth blogging about whenever I come to something that brings me to that realization.

Introduction to Word Notes

The first time I heard Winnie Banov talk about her different translations, I'll admit that I was skeptical. It seemed to me that by examining different translations of verses, you would eventually just settle on the one you liked best, which might distort the meaning of the actual verse. People do this all the time to bible verses because it's very easy to do.

After going to Nicaragua with Georgian and Winnie, I've changed my mind. On the trip, Winnie spoke about how different translations often provide different lenses for viewing scriptures. You might find one translation of a verse that's particularly touching, but you can use the rest of the translations to verify your interpretation of the verse. Having more reference material is always good, so I've recently started doing some cross-referencing of my own.

I currently have an NIV bible (from my mother), an HCSB bible (which I bought because I like the HCSB), and a NKJV bible (from a friend who I haven't seen in quite some time). The NKJV bible has some notes from Strong's concordance, which I re-discovered this morning when comparing Psalm 130 in each of the three.

Two interesting notes. The NIV and NKJV both translate verse 4 along the lines of "there is forgiveness in You, therefore You are feared". This makes no sense to me. The HCSB has a much more helpful translation "But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be revered".

I'm out of time for the other interesting note, so it will have to wait. It's too long for this post anyway.