O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them,

O YHWH, our god, you personally answered them. You were a forgiving God to them,

and one who exempted them from punishment. (Psalm 99:8 My translation)

I stumbled upon, or perhaps I should say I stumbled OVER, Psalm 99:8 in my devotional reading this morning. In context, the verse is referring to the intimate relationship that Moses, Aaron, and Samuel all enjoyed as YHWH’s priests. I was deeply bothered however by the psalmist’s twin assertions that YHWH was a forgiving God to them but also an avenger of their wrongdoings. I could not for the life of me understand how YHWH could both forgive and avenge the same person for the same sins. Afterall, biblical forgiveness precludes revenge, even for God. If God avenges our wrongdoing, then there is nothing to forgive. He has imposed the penalty due to our sin, and exacted from us payment in full for the debt. Nothing is forgiven.

These were my thoughts upon reading the English translation, in this case, the ESV. This inner conflict made me suspicious and so I looked up Psalm 99:8 in my Hebrew Bible and translated the verse for myself. That is when I discovered a fascinating and extremely significant ambiguity in the text. One must remember that the Hebrew Bible was originally written without vowels. The vowel signs were added later by scribes called Masoretes. While the Masoretes were very careful and preserved an oral tradition regarding how to pronounce the text and therefore which vowels to insert where, they were not infallible and subsequent scholarship has found a number of mistakes in their work. This means that when one is reading the Hebrew Bible, one must sometimes ignore the vowels and consider all other possible pronunciations.

The translation preserved in the ESV simply accepts the vowels as inserted by the Masoretes. An equally feasible reading of the text, however, is that YHWH is “one who exempted them from punishment” rather than “an avenger of their wrongdoings.” I know it seems bizarre that one could get basically an opposite meaning from the same consonants, but let me explain. The vowel points as preserved in the Masoretic tradition are assuming that the verb here is from the root n-q-m, meaning “to avenge.” A number of scholars, however, have proposed a reading that understands the verb to be from a different root, n-q-h, which means to absolve guilt, to exempt from punishment. To this root was added the pronoun “them” which in Hebrew is added directly to the verb as a suffix resulting in the consonants n-q-m and thus identical to the root meaning “to avenge.” This latter reading resolves the apparent contradiction, makes far better sense in context, fits the parallelism of the poetry, and further emphasizes the divine mercy YHWH lavished on his servants in the OT.

Please forgive the grammar lesson, but it makes a very important point. The Bible rewards careful, patient, painstaking study. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer Bible readers care to take the time to dig into problems such as the one I stumbled upon and stumbled over this morning. Even among those whom God has called to minister to and teach his flock there is a dwindling interest in acquiring the tools necessary for the kind of study required to resolve apparent contradictions like the one I had to work out above. Unfortunately, even schools that train men and women for ministry are rapidly abandoning their commitment to teach Hebrew and Greek and textual criticism because such challenging courses scare off potential students and negatively impact enrollment. We must remember that God has asked us to love him with all of our mind as well as with all of heart and all of our might. We must love God enough intellectually to be willing to learn whatever basic skills we need to know him truly and intimately and to understand his intentions toward us.

My son, Khyle, suffers from mild autism. When he was first diagnosed at the age of four, I knew basically nothing about this condition. Upon realizing, however, that a healthy relationship with my son depended on my understanding the very different and intensified way he processes stimuli, I started to read books about autism. I had no interest in autism whatsoever until I realized my son had it. Now, I am a student of autism, not because I have some nerdy interest in autism but because I love my son and I want to know him intimately and understand him deeply.

The same is true for knowing God, loving God, and understanding God deeply. It just so happens that when YHWH revealed his will to Israel, he did so in Hebrew. This places a burden upon Christians to either learn Hebrew or to insist upon sitting under the teaching and preaching of leaders who know at least enough Hebrew to understand issues as those described above. No, you personally don’t have to know Hebrew to understand the Bible, but somebody does. Let’s encourage those with the gifts and inclination to learn these languages and study at this level for all of our sakes. Let’s expect more from our spiritual leaders, our seminaries, and ourselves. Remember that God became human in Jesus of Nazareth in order to understand our plight, know who we are, and understand us deeply. If God loved us enough to dive that deeply into our experience, surely we can love God enough to study, to dig deep, to ask hard questions, to think, to challenge traditional interpretations when there is reason to do so, and to patiently listen to the insights of those whom God has called to learn Greek and Hebrew to better serve his people.

I do not mean for this to be a rant, I mean for this to be a meditation. So, let me offer one final implication of my musings this morning. Translations are not without their blind spots. As a translator, I have certain biases and blind spots that affect how I understand, and, therefore, how I translate biblical texts. The same is true for all translators and translations. This is why it is so important to have several that we can compare and contrast. My point here is that the translator responsible for the ESV’s rendering of Psalm 99:8 may be succumbing, either consciously or unconsciously, to a popular conception of YHWH as vengeful, angry, and trigger happy in the easy acceptance of the reading as presented in the Masoretic tradition. Alternatively, I may be succumbing to my deep desire to change the way people see God in the OT in my preference for the proposed emendation. I do not fault the ESV for its legitimate translation. I simply question how sensible and consistent the result is. This exercise this morning has reminded me of how easily I am led by my assumptions and prejudices in reading the Bible rather than being led by the Spirit. Only when I take the time to dig deep, ask hard questions, and even interrogate my own assumptions about a text, do I enter the realm of Spirit-led Bible reading and experience genuine heart transformation.

Father,

Forgive me for my laziness to which I often succumb when reading your word or obeying your word. My sloppy interpretations have led to sloppy obedience and sometimes even to disobedience. You deserve much better than that and I am convicted today that I need to give you much better than that. More importantly, I am convicted that I can give you much better than that because of the example of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, you were such a careful and creative reader of the Old Testament. At the age of twelve you committed yourself to extended time with scholars and scribes so great was your hunger for knowledge. Your love for the Father drove you to study deeply and carefully so that even the scholars were amazed at the depth of your interest and insight. Thank you for loving both the Father and us enough to apply yourself diligently to study and obey the Scriptures. Holy Spirit, thank you for always being present as my guide when I read Scripture. Forgive me for not giving you my full attention, for those times when I ignore you in favor of my biases, prejudices, and the idolatry of tradition. Energize me anew in the hard work of understanding and obeying the whole counsel of God. Generate in me such a great love for God that I would be willing to roll up my sleeves and engage in the hard, slow work of understanding and obeying with greater precision and accuracy every day.

AMEN