The Art of Translation

One of the podcast I like to listen to is called "the Bible for Normal People."  The episode this week was an interview with Robert Alter called "The Art of Translating the Bible."

Have you ever thought of translation as art?  Well-crafted writing is art, so I can imagine that translating the written word from one language to another could be considered an art. 

Do you remember in the story of Samson (in Judges), Samson tells 30 men at a party that if they solve his riddle, he will buy them each a set of clothes? They finally coax the answer out of Samson's wife, so he loose the bet.  He goes to Ashkelon, a Philistine city, and kills 30 men, takes their clothes, and gives them to the 30 men at the party.

Or at least that's what most translations say.

But Alter talks about this in the podcast.  He says that the word for clothes used when the bet is made is slightly different than the word for clothes when Samson kills the 30 men.  Alter says if you translate it a little bit differently, then the meaning changes.  The second word that is translated a clothes is only used one other time in the Bible - in the telling of the war between the supporters of King Saul and of the (to be) King David.  It has to do with a warrior - and modern translators say that the word here is a piece of clothing.  But that isn't what warriors take when they slay a foe - they don't take clothes, they take armor.

Alter says that Samson doesn't kill 30 ordinary men - he kills 30 warriors.  And he brings back their armor.  

Think about the difference that makes in how we read the story.  The first way - killing 30 men and taking their clothes - makes Samson look like man who doesn't want to pay for 30 sets of clothes, so he kills men and takes their clothes instead.  If you think of it as 30 warriors with 30 sets of armor, imagine the different message that it sends to the 30 men at the party.  "I am Samson.  I can kill 30 WARRIORS just on my own."

Art.

Gideon, Part 4

This week has been a reply of my notes for a Sunday School lesson I taught at Annual Conference using Judges 6:11-18.  Today's post concerns our discussion regarding application of what we can learn from the scriputre.

Fear:  Gideon and the Israelites were living in constant fear.  Think about it for a moment - what is it like to live in constant fear?  Can you think of a place in the world where the people live in constant fear? Has your safety and/or security ever been threatened? How did you respond?  This is a sidenote, but I wonder if understanding what it is like to live in fear or to have your security threatened can help increase our kindness to other people who are experiencing life like that.

Abandonment: Gideon has grown up with stories told about how God rescued the Israelites from Pharaoh through the work of Moses. He has heard about God working through Joseph in Egypt. He has heard great stories about God doing wonderful, fantastic, unbelievable things.  And Gideon wonders – has God abandoned us? Why would God do that? Have you ever been in a difficult situation and felt like God had abandoned you? Can you imagine that people would feel that way?

Doubt: Gideon experiences doubt. He doubts that God is present with them in their current circumstances, and he doubts that God is calling the right person – so he is doubting God’s abilities. What do you think about doubt? Is it a sin? Is it a natural part of faith? I think doubt is evidence that we are exploring our faith deeply – I think doubt is the growing pain of sanctifying grace – in order to mature in our faith, we have to ask God and our faith questions. I think we can trust God enough to bring God our doubts. When have you experienced doubt? Do you doubt your ability to answer God’s call? Do you find doubt in your faith? Does Gideon’s doubt help you relate to him?  How does God respond to Gideon’s doubt? with patience or impatience? How will God respond to your own doubts? How should we respond to other people’s doubts?

Why?: One of the most difficult questions we struggle with is why bad things happen to people who we judge to be good people? What are some of the ways that people answer that question?  If God makes good things happen to people who are believers, then what does that say to a faithful disciple who experiences terrible tragedy?  I worry that we steal people’s faith from them when we say things like, “God needed another flower in his garden.” The logical step from that is that God made my child sick and let him die in order to have another flower – we throw terrible blame on God when people need God the most.

Call: What does verse 14 say to us? “you have strength, so go and rescue Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not personally sending you?”

1. Do we hear in this verse an answer to part of our question about why bad things happen? Do we hear in this that we have a role to play in God’s plan?
2. Think back to the feeding of the 5000. Jesus tells the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” And at the end of the story, the disciples see the baskets, still full. I think this is a lesson for them – the abundance that is in front of them, when they only saw scarcity. There is power in God that God uses to equip us for the work to be done.
3. We are the answer to people’s prayers.  Is there a flood story that could be told here?

God with us:  One of the things I took with me when I completed my Emmaus walk is that God will be with me, all the time - whatever he calls me to go, I will not have to do alone.  Do you believe that God is always with us?  Have you had an experience that confirmed this for you?

Call to ministry:  Do you have a call to ministry? Important distinction – everyone is called to ministry – not just pastors.  Who does God call? The perfect? The wonderful and powerful? Does God choose who we would choose if it was our responsibility?  What is God calling you to do? What is standing in your way of doing it?

Conclusions

As we leave this place, keep in mind verse 16. The God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush is the same God who called Gideon, even though Gideon was full of doubts. This is the same God who fed 5000 people amid the doubts and scarcity mindset of the disiples. This is I AM. This is your God; this God is always with you, even when you don’t “feel” it.  And I AM is calling you.

How will you respond?

Gideon, Part 3

As I mentioned on Monday, I was asked to lead a Sunday school class at Annual Conference. This is a series of posts from my notes. The lesson is based on Judges 6: 11-18. Today's post is about verses 14-18.

¹⁴ Then the Lord turned to him and said, “You have strength, so go and rescue Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not personally sending you?”
¹⁵ But again Gideon said to him, “With all due respect, my Lord, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I’m the youngest in my household.”
¹⁶ The Lord replied, “Because I’m with you, you’ll defeat the Midianites as if they were just one person.”
¹⁷ Then Gideon said to him, “If I’ve gained your approval, please show me a sign that it’s really you speaking with me. ¹⁸ Don’t leave here until I return, bring out my offering, and set it in front of you.”
The Lord replied, “I’ll stay until you return.”

Then looking at these verses:

1. The text switches from the Lord’s messenger to the Lord – don’t get sidetracked by that. Obviously, if it is a messenger, it is a messenger who speaks with the Lord’s authority.
2. Take a closer look at verse 16:  The Lord replied, “Because I’m with you, you’ll defeat the Midianites as if they were just one person.  Another way to translate that verse is to say, “Because I AM is with you...” Where have we heard that before? This is the God of the burning bush. This is I AM.
3. We’ll talk more about this later, but it is a vignette of a person being called to follow God and do God’s work, but who is experiencing doubt in his own abilities. I think it is easy to identify with Gideon.

Gideon, Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, I was asked to lead a Sunday school class at Annual Conference. This is a series of posts from my notes. The lesson is based on Judges 6: 11-13.

Today's post is our discussion on verses 11-13:

¹¹ Then the Lord’s messenger came and sat under the oak at Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. ¹² The Lord’s messenger appeared to him and said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!”
¹³ But Gideon replied to him, “With all due respect, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his amazing works that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Didn’t the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and allowed Midian to overpower us.”

A few things to notice in these verses:

1. One doesn’t normally thresh wheat in a winepress – you normally would do it outside, but you can imagine the dust that rises when you separate the wheat from the chaff. The cloud of dust would attract the Midianites, who would come and take the crop. So Gideon is hiding out of fear, and also because the wheat is going to provide food for his family – he’s protecting them. But there is no mention that this is an unusual thing for the day – it must have been standard operating procedure for this time of oppression. It gives us a glimpse at how the Israelites were living.
2. So, imagine how Gideon feels when the messenger appears and calls him a mighty warrior. He probably feels like anything except a warrior, hiding out to thresh the grain.
3. And then we get a glimpse into Gideon’s mindset – his doubts and frustrations. He has heard about God’s mighty works, and yet he doesn’t see them. Has God abandoned us?

Gideon, Part 1

I was honored to be asked to lead a Sunday school class at Annual Conference this year. Our class was the one based on the International Adult Bible Studies series. For the next four posts, I'll share my notes the lesson from that morning.

Background

The time of the judges is after the Israelites had settled into the promised land, but before the rise of kings over Israel. The historical time in which Judges is set was a time when major population shifts occurred in the world – probably related to large earthquakes that destroyed large cities during the bronze age. This led to economic issues  throughout southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia. During this time period, the Minoan and Mycenean cultures came to an end. The Hittites were forced into Syria. Greece experienced a time of a “dark age.” Egypt began to decline. A power vacuum was created in the world. Smaller powers began vying for control. It was an opportunity for Israel to grow – think about David’s kingdom later – but they still had struggles, and we see those in the book of Judges.

You may be familiar with the “cycle” we see in Judges. The people would “do evil” by serving other dogs and disobeying Yahweh. God would punish them by allowing some other nation to subjugate them. After many years of oppression, the people would cry out to God. God would send them a deliverer – called a judge in some translations. The deliverer, who was most often a military commander, would lead the people to defeat the oppressor. As a result, the people would live in peace for a time, but then the cycle would start again.

The verses for study today are the call of Gideon, who was one of the judges. At the time of Gideon, the people were being oppressed by the Midians. Have you heard of the Midians before? Who were they?

1. In Genesis 25, we learn that Abraham marries a woman named Keturah. They have six children. One of them was Midian. 
2. In Exodus 2, Moses flees to an area called Midian, which some people think was located in northwestern Arabia. Others say that Midian was not a place, but was a confederation of tribes. Either way, Moses meets the priest of Midian – we would come to know him as Jethro – who had seven daughters. One of his daughters was Zipporah, who Moses married.
3. Other than these references, the Midianites were often seen as Israel’s enemy – Numbers 25-31, Psalm 83:9, Isaiah 10:26
4. They were probably nomadic or semi-nomadic people, and during the verses on which we will focus, they were oppressing the Israelites. 

Gideon was a member of the tribe of Manasseh, and he was a younger son of Joash.