Give Ear

Grumbling was the Israelites habitual vocabulary, and it is too often mine, not thanksgiving. Grumbling bubbled out of their hearts against their leader, but repeatedly Moses warned them that they were grumbling against God, for the things they were grumbling about Moses had no power to change and he was suffering all the same deprivations of basic needs as they were.

God answered Moses’ cry for help at Marah by giving him a log to put in the impotable water and it became sweet. At that point, the moment of provision, it says The LORD tested them, saying “If you will diligently listen to the voice of your LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.” And then it says they came to Elim, where there was an abundance of water and palm trees for shade. God’s instruction was sealed by a luxurious provision, a healing balm from their wilderness hardships and an impetus for their faith, a sign that he would always provide. The Garden of Eden all over again: they were provided for and God gave them a rule to see if they would they would love Him as their God or focus on their creature comforts. The LORD tested their hearts again a little later using food, by providing food for them with instructions for exactly how they should gather it, to see “whether they will walk in my law or not.” Even without knowing the details, you know they flunked. The people quarreled with Moses again at Rephidim, over water—again—and Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?”

So the LORD tests us to see if we will give ear to his commandments and trust him, whether regardless of circumstances, we will look to him with expectant thanksgiving. Humans test the LORD by challenging his authority, his Godness, and doubting his love.

The LORD’s testing me is good and right, and apart from his provision of a Saviour, I fail.

My testing the LORD is sin.

“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins…” among others, sins of withholding my ears instead of giving them over to his commandments and his healing; sins of lifting up a voice of grumbling and quarreling instead of thanksgiving. The moment of provision is at once the moment of healing and the moment of testing. I have occasion to “give ear” if you will, at least three times a day! And so many more.

Incline My Ear

I have embarked on a new scripture reading project in 2012, reading with antennae up for the themes of listening, hearing, and the sounds of God's voice and ours. I'm glad about what I've already learned. Today the connection between the Psalm and the New Testament portion was humming with sympathetic resonance.

The psalmist prays for God to hear his just cause and attend to his cry, confident that He will: “Incline your ear to me, hear my words.” (Psalm 17:6) Isn't that a beautiful phrase: incline your ear? Active listening, like a plant reaching for the sun.

Jesus closed his parables often with “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” His parable in Matthew 13 is the definitive parable in a sense for his disciples to learn to understand how to hear, and explains why he spoke to the crowds in parables, “because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not understand.” He spoke in terms of these people fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, which seems to me to indicate that the struggle for humans to hear is the same as it has always been post Eden. “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear.”

Boy, is that ever true! I am teaching a class for non music majors called The Art of Listening, and Jesus’ parable describes the same four kinds of students I see in my classes two millennia later: the tough ones by the path, for whom nothing I could do would make them care about music or the importance of learning to listen; the ones on rocky soil, who are quick to think various musics are cool, but who “have no root within themselves” so their likes are as quick to change as the wind and they ultimately don’t seem to learn anything; the ones among thorns, who only enjoy learning to listen if they feel good at it or if it requires no work from them, who shrink from any music that is slightly more demanding than their intellects can provide while answering their incessant text messages; and the ones in good soil, of which I am fortunate to have several, who are careful and attentive listeners, ask questions, and are willing to articulate what they hear so it can grow into something others will benefit from.

I find myself praying, “Incline my ear to hear and to attend,” in the face of the ever present danger of my own heart growing dull and unable to hear. I doubt I shall be able to sharpen dull ears if my own are dull, to awaken sleepy students if I myself am dozing off. My confidence rests in His inclining ear.

Significance, history, beauty, and influence of the KJV: a bibliography

Hello friends. I must confess that over the Thanksgiving weekend, I fell off the reading regimen I have enjoyed so much this year. Both my brothers and wives and my niece came to visit. A destabilizing event of great joy, but it's taken awhile to get back into my routines. So I missed Daniel, but I've decided to just come back to him some other time and get back with the schedule. I think my favorite thing about this project has been rediscovering the OT prophets. Really, I had forgotten or maybe never noticed. I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Ali for helping me rediscover all that richness by inviting me to be part of this project. Thanks much, Ali.

As promised many months ago, below you will find something of a bibliography of fairly recent writings about the KJV. I don't claim it is comprehensive, but it's a start. I've enjoyed poking around in some of these resources.

Alter, Robert. Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Bobrick, Benson. Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Brake, Donald L. and Shelly Beach. A Visual History of the King James Bible: The Dramatic Story of the World’s Best-Known Translation. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011.

Burke, David G., ed. Translation that Openeth the Window: Reflections on the History and Legacy of the King James Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.

Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Christian History, Issue 100, 2011. www.christianhistorymagazine.org

Crystal, David. Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Daniell, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Daniell has also written what is arguably the definitive biography of William Tyndale, to whom English readers and lovers of the Bible owe so much. Simply entitled William Tyndale: A Biography, it was published also by Yale University Press in 1994. I came away with an increased appreciation of the seemingly incalculable cost in martyrs’ blood for my salvation. Besides the good this has wrought in my soul in increasing its bent towards gratitude, it has also provided a helpful perspective on the sometimes necessary entanglement in politics the truth of the gospel can lead to, simply in a Christian’s willingness to proclaim the truth of Scripture, as gently and yet forthrightly as possible for its own sake and for the salvation of its hearers, even when it is politically or culturally unpopular, even dangerous to do so.

Fujimura, Makoto. The Four Gospels. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2011.
Fujimura illuminates the text of the ESV in honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version. His illuminations are exquisite. I find it a unique tribute to the artful language of the KJV to take what some would consider verbally a less elegant modern translation (even for all its other benefits) and embellish the text with visual beauty. The fact is the ESV shares a strong connection with the KJV in its translation lineage, and some of Tyndale’s exact phrases remain in the ESV.

McGrath, Alistair. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. New York: Random House, 2001.

Moore, Helen and Julian Reid, eds. Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Version. Oxford: Bodleian Library, U of Oxford, 2011.

Nicolson, Adam. God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.

Noll, Mark. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/worldwithoutkjv.html

Norton, David. A Textual History of the King James Version. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Rhodes, Errol F. and Liana Lupas, eds. The Translators to the Reader: The Original Preface of the King James Version of 1611 Revisited. New York: American Bible Society, 1997.

Ryken, Leland. Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most Influential English Translation. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2011.

Teems, David. Majestie: The King Behind the King James Bible. Thomas Nelson, 2010.

Wilson, Derek. The People’s Bible: The Remarkable History of the King James Version. Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2010.

http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/view.html?id=1147

One further brief note in this excessively long post. In his 2003 book The Death of Picasso, Guy Davenport includes a great essay on Benson Bobrick’s book listed above. The following two tidbits are from that essay, found on pages 134-139 of his beautiful book of essays.

1. Bobrick took his title, Wide as the Waters Be from an anonymous, (and prophetic) hymn about John Wycliffe (1328-1384), who died before they could burn him at the stake for translating the very first English Bible. In 1428, the Church dug up his bones and burned them postmortem on a bridge over the River Swift, a tributary of the Avon. Thus the hymn:
The Avon to the Severn runs
The Severn to the sea,
And Wickliffe’s dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters be.

2. Tyndale was burned at the stake on October 6, 1536 for his English translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, which largely was the basis for Authorized Version of 1611. King James’s translators tidied up Tyndale’s translation, but accepted much of what he had rendered. Davenport comments:

Tyndale was burned alive for translating ekklesia as “congregation” (rather than “church”) and presbyteros as “elder” (rather than “priest”)—throwing open the way for Baptists to worship God in cellars and for Presbyterians to sing hymns in darkest Scotland. The hierarchy in Rome feared that placing the Bible in the hands of weavers and grocers would fragment the Church into a chaos of amateur theologians, wild enthusiasts, and illiterate exegetes. They were right: Protestant sects have chosen a menu of virtues, vices, and fixations from the Bible. (I know of a congregation in South Carolina that does not wear neckties, citing Isaiah’s putdown of gaudy apparel that the King James Version calls “tyres,” archaic English for “attire.” “Tyre” and “tie” sound the same on a South Carolina tongue.) (p.138)

Common Sense Christianity

For most of my childhood and youth, I had one pastor--Steve Bailey.  He came to our church when I was in fourth grade or so, and though my mother has since changed churches (and denominations!) and has since not attended my childhood church in some years, I've been able to make out that Steve left sometime about two years ago.  He was there for some time, then.

I remember him preaching a sermon, or maybe it was a series, on James.  The sermon (series?) was called "Common Sense Christianity."  That name, I'll never forget.  It's been one of the things that's stuck with me through the highs and lows of my faith, through my disbelief and unbelief and very strong belief.  I've revisited James countless times, though I always seem to forget it, and find myself surprised and astonied (KJV word!) each time I read his letter again.  It's so simple, so "common sense," and yet so powerful.  Tonight, I read Chapter 1, and 19-21 struck me as especially apt:

¹⁹Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
 ²⁰For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
 ²¹Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 

As a man, as a weak man, I'm always looking for discipline.  And this seems to ask of us, of me, the most simple, but almost most difficult form of discipline--slow to speak, slow to wrath, but swift to hear.  How hard is that?  So hard.

I came across the following, about these verses, from the concise Matthew Henry commentary:

Instead of blaming God under our trials, let us open our ears and hearts to learn what he teaches by them. And if men would govern their tongues, they must govern their passions. The worst thing we can bring to any dispute, is anger. Here is an exhortation to lay apart, and to cast off as a filthy garment, all sinful practices. This must reach to sins of thought and affection, as well as of speech and practice; to every thing corrupt and sinful. We must yield ourselves to the word of God, with humble and teachable minds. Being willing to hear of our faults, taking it not only patiently, but thankfully. It is the design of the word of God to make us wise to salvation; and those who propose any mean or low ends in attending upon it, dishonour the gospel, and disappoint their own souls.

Tonight, I hear this from our Father--let us search for discipline, and let us know that the only way to find it is to be teachable and humble, lest we dishonor our own souls and our Lord's sacrifice.

Amen, beloved.

 

Did you ever beg anyone to listen?

Jeremiah has surprised me. I began with expectations of weepy prophetic utterances and lots of doom and judgment. What I've found is raw courage on Jeremiah's part, endless patience and unrelenting offers of salvation on God's part, and determined disbelief and disobedience on the part of the hearers. It's not easy to say things that people really need to listen to and see them repeatedly take no interest whatsoever. 22:29 "O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD." I can't get over the sound of that plea, a source of help for me as I prepare to teach a class of non music majors how to listen to classical music. Jeremiah will be my companion in this journey, quaking in my boots I assure you.

William Tyndale

I'm reading a lengthy biography of William Tyndale's life and I am finding it humbling and highly educational. The excerpt below is taken from a work Tyndale wrote called The Obedience of a Christian Man. He is offering an apology, yet again, for why a literal translation of the scriptures in English from the original languages was so necessary. It is not difficult to see why his considerable rhetorical skill rocked the boats of the ecclesiastical powers that be. It reads beautifully out loud:

"The greatest cause of which captivity and the decay of the faith and this blindness wherein we now are, sprang first of allegories. For Origen and they of his time drew all the scripture unto allegories. Whose ensample they that came after followed so long, till at the last they forgot the order, and process of the text, supposing that the scripture served but to feign allegories upon. Insomuch that twenty doctors expound one text twenty ways, as children make descant upon plain song. Then came our sophisters with the Anagogical and chopological sense, and with an anti-theme of half an inch, out of which some of them draw a thread of nine days long. Yea thou shalt find enough that will preach Christ, and prove what some ever point of the faith that thou will, as well out of a fable of Ovid or any other Poet, as out of St. John's gospel or Paul's epistles. Yea they are come into such blindness that they not only say that the literal sense profiteth not, but also that it is hurtful, and noisome and killeth the soul. Which damnable doctrine they prove by a text of Paul, 2 Cor iii where he saith the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. We must therefore, say they seek out some chopological sense." ~ David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, 240.

I love "ensample," the wonderful musical analogy, and of course, "chopological"! This is the man who gave us the KJV!

First Chronicles, the Shorter Version

David:  Dear God, I think it's pretty lame I live in this fancy house and the Ark is in a tent.  I'd like to build you a house.
YHWH:  Dave, don't worry about it.
Dave:  No, Sir, I really mean it, I want to build you a house.
YHWH:  I understand.  I'm flattered, and I'd let you build me a house--but remember all that blood on your hands?  Remember Uriah's wife?  Tell you what--you can't do it, but I'll let your son do it.  Deal?
Dave:  DEAL!

David proceeds to get all the wood, all the gold, all the bronze, all the silver, and all the jewels that could possibly be used on the temple together.  He draws the plans.  He figures out who will play the harp on what day, the cymbal on what day.  Who'll guard the north door on this day.  He makes all the plans.  He can't build God's house, but he's too excited and too in love with God not to do something to praise him with all of his might (do we, friends, praise God with all of our might?  Or do we wait for the "perfect" opportunity, the really magnificent thing we can do for Him?  I think He wants us to be like David, and praise Him as best as we can, while accepting that there are some things we just can't do). 

And then, in Chapter 29, he sings a song of praise that has serious echoes of our Lord's Prayer.  And then he crowns Solomon king.  And then, the thing that hit me so hard when I read it this morning:

²⁷And the time that he reigned over Israel was forty years; seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem.

Read that again friends; not just forty years he reigned, but seven in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem.

7 and 33.  7 and 33.

Oh praise Him, friends, for His mysterious and profound symmetry.