By and large, Gundry presents his own literal translation of the text as an introduction to each section of his commentary. It seems to be fairly straightforward stuff, but I was struck by his approach to James 2:20, in which he presents a twist in his translation:

“But do you want to know, O empty human being, that faith apart from works is workless?” (emphasis mine)

By way of comparison, for the word translated as “workless”, the majority of modern translations use either “useless” (NIV, ESV, GW, GNT, HCSB, NASB, NLT), “dead” (KJV, NKJV) or “barren” (ASV, RSV, NRSV). REB uses “futile”. N.T. Wright uses “lifeless” in his new translation effort, while The Message likens it to “a corpse”.

Gundry states that his translation “advances a wordplay that means workless faith isn’t just faith apart from works. It’s also faith that doesn’t work salvation in a person.” To work salvation recalls the admonition in Philippians 2:12 to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” We are, of course, saved (“justified”) sola fide, but the process of working out salvation in our lives, i.e. “sanctification”, produces barren branches (cf. John 15:1-6) in the absence of faith-born works. That is, it doesn’t work.

Regardless, the emphasis I see on atonement as the redemptive – not placating – victory of Christ over the powers and principalities of this world resonates deeply within me.  I was recently reading Greg Boyd’s essay on Christus Victor and the emphasis on spiritual warfare and Christ’s victory over the sphere of Satan’s influence were very persuasive.

[Jesus] said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a lightning flash. Look, I have given you the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; nothing will ever harm you.” Luke 10:18-19 (all references taken from HCSB unless otherwise noted)

In the course of God’s redemptive narrative, Satan has gone from a supposed honored angel in heaven to the tempter and legal accuser of mankind with access to the heavenly throne room, to a dragon thrown down from heaven to earth whereupon he established a reign of deceit and consumptive power, to a crushed serpent with no authority over the sons of God to finally a prisoner, bound and gagged, behind the sealed door of the abyss.

In thinking about Jesus’ description of the establishment of his redemptive beachhead with the 72 disciples, I jumped not to Revelation 12, which is most commonly associated with “the fall” in Luke 10, but to the binding of the dragon in Revelation 20:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for 1,000 years. He threw him into the abyss, closed it, and put a seal on it so that he would no longer deceive the nations…. Revelation 20:1-3

So the thought occurred to me this morning that “what if the abyss is not some fantastical chasm to the core of the planet”, but is simply Earth itself — a singularity that could be isolated in space and time from the eternal heavens, a type of black hole if you will.

Christ defeated the beast and false prophet – snake and scorpion, the law and false shepherds – and left the serpent Satan is bound and gagged on Earth after his resurrection, a former despot on the lam from the growing redemptive work of Christ. His power has been constrained, though as his sphere of influence contracts, the appearance of his power grows, just as a saturated solution appears more concentrated as it slowly evaporates, or like a fish finds himself appearing larger and larger as the pond where he lives slowly drains and becomes smaller.

Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians that “you know what currently restrains [the man of lawlessness], so that he will be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; but the one now restraining will do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed.” (2 Thess 2:6-8) The one restraining is the abyss, or perhaps more properly the angel of the abyss. I wonder if it is the increasingly redeemed creation or perhaps the church that moves the restraining angel “out of the way” to stand in opposition to the man of lawlessness, e.g. Satan. For eventually Satan “must be released for a short time” (Rev 20:3) until “the Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of His mouth and will bring him to nothing with the brightness of His coming.” (2 Thess 2:8).

Finally, if we are the abyss, then perhaps there is comfort not only in our perseverance in Christ, but in knowing that in the deepest pits on Earth, even on the brightest days, one can still see stars:

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. [...] Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions

Persistence in [pride] brings on a deluge of depravity.”

(Ecclesiasticus 10:13, NEB)

How blest are those who know their need of God; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

(Matthew 5:3, NEB)

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1

Examples of bubbling cauldron scenes — with or without witches — in classic literature are seemingly innumerable, and in the heart of the book of Ezekiel, we find that even the Bible contributes to the genre. The parable of the boiling pot graphically illustrates a message of judgement from God on the leaders of Jerusalem, who had been set siege upon by the king of Babylon. The parable itself is turnabout on an earlier vision, cf. Ezekiel 11:1-12, where the prophet hears the corrupt leadership compare the safety of the city to a boiling pot of meat.

In this post, I am looking at the first part of the parable, Ezekiel 24:3b-5, comparing the classic KJV with two modern translations, the Revised English Bible (REB) and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). My intent is such: compare the KJV to a translation example that emphasizes literary language (REB) and to an example of a translation that offers idiomatic English grammar (HCSB), with the idea to see what is gained or lost from an English styling perspective.

First, I offer this caveat: I don’t know Hebrew, so I will not be comparing these translations to the original text, nor will I be referencing Strongs or somesuch tool. I wish to only consider the approach of the English translations and how they compare to themselves.

Ezekiel 24:3

While each of the translations retains a sense of the repetition — Set on a pot, set it on, — both the REB and HCSB have introduced changes to the KJV text. First, in flipping the order of the noun (“pot/cauldron”) and preposition (“0n”) in the initial phrase, both translations saw fit to introduce a prepositional object (“the fire”) that is not in the KJV (or in most other non-functional translations that I consulted). While grammatically correct, the choice of “the fire” as the object may be viewed as somewhat arbitrary (unless there is a textual variant out there with this word choice) since there are other objects that could be equally used, e.g. “the pit”.

The change in the HCSB seems entirely motivated by creating a more natural order to the English grammar. While this creates a phrase that sounds correct, I would argue that the addition dampens the immediate effect of the repetition. If the HCSB had simply translated the phrase as “put on the pot, put it on”, I might have suggested that the alliteration of “put/pot” created an even stronger reading than the KJV’s rendering.

The same addition in the REB can perhaps be defended by considering the other changes in this verse. The REB has connected the second repetition of “set it on” to the last phrase, “pour in water”, creating a second line phrase that is equally yoked to the expanded phrase of the first line. Furthermore, the translation now begins each line with the same repeating verb, a strong device in English poetry.

Ezekiel 24:4

Compared to the KJV, the HCSB is fairly conservative in its treatment of v4. The verb “gather” has been updated to “place”, to a lesser effect to my ears, and dropping the word “even” fails to convey that the leaders of Jerusalem – the good pieces – were being included in the judgement along with people of the city. By dropping articles like “the” from the translation, the HCSB destroys the line meters — for example, the KJV finishes with verse with two lines of six syllables, while the HCSB now has uneven lines of 4 syllables and 5 syllables. It seems like it would have been a simple matter to selectively use articles to fill out the meters or just to preserve the KJV wording.

The REB has again manipulated the wording to create stronger poetic effects in the English. First, in line 1, by shifting the phrase “into it” to the beginning of the line, the translation now ends lines 1 and 2 with the variants of “pieces”, creating another repeating effect. Next, perhaps this is a stretch, but if you read “every” in line 2 as “ev-er-ry”, then the REB translators have embedded a haiku in lines 2-4, with syllables of 5-7-5. Finally, using “best” instead of “choice” creates another alliterative effect with “bones”, something that’s echoed in the first line of verse 5 (see below).

Ezekiel 24:5

The HCSB throws a curveball to the tongue with the superlative “choicest” standing oddly out from even the KJV. I’m not entirely sure what to think about that, other than to note that it is shared with the ESV and NASB, so it is presumably rooted in the ASV/RSV lineage, something that I would not have expected from the HCSB as a new translation.

The REB’s rendering of “the pick of the flock” is a consonance effect with the “ck” sound and plays off of the alliteration of “the best of the bones” at the end of v.4, a connection that is underscored by the choices of punctuation that alter the actual construction of the phrases (compared to the KJV).

I have to confess at this point that my interest in this overall passage was initially piqued by the REB’s alliterative rendering in v5: coming across “seethe the stew” was a magical bit of reading and I was curious to find the root of it in the KJV, though in true NEB/REB fashion, the words have been transformed into perhaps more idiomatic English poetry, though it’s doubtful that stew was in mind here (though spices are added later in v.10). Boiling meat bones to create soup stock is a time-tested practice that deserves something more inspired than the HCSB’s simple “cook the bones”…

Finally, I would also bring in the venerable Jerusalem Bible (though sadly not its successor) at this point for a rendering of the third line that seems steeped in Shakespeare and appropriate to the genre:

Take the best of the flock.
Then heap wood underneath;
make the pot boil and bubble
until even the bones are cooked.

Concluding thoughts

With even this short look at a few verses, it seems easy to conclude that the REB makes attempts to render the text into English poetry, using standard devices such as alliteration, consonance, meter and repetition to create passages that sound as well as read to greater effect.

The HCSB seems content to normalize traditional (KJV) renderings into standard English grammar, making it perhaps easier to read, but at the expense of the possible poetic effects, whether from the original Hebrew or in English itself. This is a common criticism of most modern English translations, deservedly so it seems, and one that the REB stands in stark contrast to. My preference is clear.

For those curious, I quoted Titus 3:9-10 to kick things off:

“But avoid foolish [...] arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them.”

Here’s my point: while written with respect to the Old Testament law, I see the passage from Titus applying to modern theological discussions equally as well. If arguments and disputes about law/theology cause division among believers to the point that lines are drawn in the sand as to who is a real believer, then are they really worth pursuing?

Mind you, I am not saying that Calvanism is not valid Christianity. I believe it is, just as Arminianism is and all the various points of view in between. But if somebody calls their orthodox point of view the only true gospel to the exclusion of other orthodox points of view, then I will question if it should be validly called *the* gospel. In fact, with all due respect to Spurgeon et al, I would say that any systematic theological point of view is not *the* gospel inasmuch as by focusing interpretation on a defined set of rules, they contain only a partial perspective of the object of the gospel and are not the object itself.

I would perhaps even argue that it is only by eliminating systematics that we can even approach an inclusive understanding of the object of the gospel. That being Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven incarnate for all mankind and the future hope of all creation.

The Bible is the story of Christ, but it is not Christ himself. Everything we have – the Old Testament narratives, wisdom literature, prophetic books, the “gospels”, the letters of the New Testatment, our theological and ecclesiastical traditions and all the rest — they present, reveal, interpret and apply the truth of Christ to our lives, but they are not the gospel in and of themselves.

I write this at the risk of being called arrogant (again), but I place my hope in Christ, not the Bible, Calvin, Protestantism, or any other object of mankind.

• A Hope-filled Christian History, Part One
• A Hope-filled Reading of Christian History, Part Two
• A Hope-filled Reading of Christian History, Part Three
• A Hope-filled Reading of Christian History, Part Four
• A Hope-filled Reading of Christian History, Part Five

But God is rich in mercy, and because of his great love for us, he brought us to life with Christ when we were dead because of our sins; it is by grace you are saved. And he raised us up in union with Christ Jesus and enthroned us with him in the heavenly realms, so that he might display in the ages to come how immense are the resources of his grace, and how great his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you are saved through faith; it is not your own doing. It is God’s gift, not a reward for work done. There is nothing for anyone to boast of; we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the life of good deeds which God designed for us.

Ephesians 2:1-10 (REB, emphasis mine)

A wilderness of words
So subtly blurs the truth
That men rejoice in lies
They learned in Sunday School [...]

Read the rest at Vine and Fig: Poems and Comments for the Lord

God loves his whole creation. Once sin was present in it, God began a long campaign to win the hearts of people so as to restore creation. God means for us [...] to love everyone we can into the great mission of restoring everything in creation to all it is meant to be. The eventual destiny of redeemed human life is a restored earth.

– Trace James, So Just How Bad Is Rob Bell?