Thought for Today
Genesis 11:1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Matthew 6:7 "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Luke 21:15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.
Sometimes we forget the awesome power of words. We toss words around carelessly, ignoring their capacity to harm or to heal, to separate or to divide. It is easy to forget that Creation is the result of “and God said, let there be . . .” Words created; words have destroyed.
Humans being what we are, that situation pre-Babel lasted only a very short time. By the 7th verse of Genesis 11, God said, “Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." Since then, confusion has abounded throughout our history and all of our civilizations. That confusion has transcended the plethora of different languages we have derived and even infuses our attempts to communicate within every given language.
Words are the very commerce of communication, yet we bandy them about without much consideration for the subtleties and connotations in how they are used. We also easily forget that various words take on different meanings when they are used in differing contexts.
I was originally trained as an engineer. Engineers are trained to pay particular attention to clarity in our communications. I was also trained toward brevity in communication and to avoid repetition. That lasted until I went to graduate school, where I had to learn to communicate somewhat differently. Brevity was out, repetition was acceptable when it helped emphasize the point I was trying to make.
Then, I went to seminary. Not only did I have to learn a third style of communication, I also had to learn a different professional vocabulary. For example, the word substance means one thing to an engineer, something very similar in business and commerce, and something entirely different in theo-speak. Ask me about transubstantiation . . . go on, I dare you!
Everything I have written so far is mostly applicable to written communication. Verbal communication is even more complex and confusing. Many factors influence verbal communication. We convey irony, anger, confusion and many other moods through non-verbal indicators as well as through our words. Many of us are familiar with ‘body language’ and the hints it can give us as to the context in which words are offered. Something as simple as a raised eyebrow can completely change the meaning of the spoken words.
One of the problems we encounter in reading and understanding our holy scriptures, our Bible, is all of the non-verbal clues which cannot be conveyed in writing. The challenges in the multiplicity of languages involved is almost overwhelming. The written words we read were first spoken (probably) in ancient Hebrew for the Old Testament and Aramaic for the New Testament. Much of the Old Testament occurs prior to the development of written Hebrew (about 1000BC) and Hebrew was an oral language at the time. Any written records would have been in Egyptian or some other Semitic language. The Septuagint (LXX) “is the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, created . . . during the 3rd century BCE” (Copilot Search) The earliest New Testament texts we have were written (primarily) in Greek. So the Bibles we read have gone from Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek to English. Whew!!
Just to make life more interesting, I was raised speaking Texican, a language similar to English . . . at least to southern English. I now live in New England and my neighbors and congregation speak New England English. The English and Americans may well be 2 peoples separated by a common language, but the Americans themselves are separated even further by that same common language.
It is a wonder we can communicate at all! But, thank goodness, Jesus promised, “Luke 21:15 I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
Stay safe, listen to Jesus, trust God,
Pastor Ray