Sheep and Goats

Month: December 2025

  • The Scrappy Days of Long Ago

    The really scrappy days of Jehovah’s Witnesses versus mainstream denominations was forged in the time of the World Wars. Then, the clergy ardently followed the flag on both sides during both wars, afterwards presuming to slip once again into that comfortable chair of spokesman for the Prince of Peace. Witnesses called them on it. After all, if you are not going to stand up for peace in time of war, just when do you stand up for it?

    “It was long ago. The burning heat has quelled. Religion is too busy licking its wounds to mess much with the Witnesses and the Witnesses in turn no longer provoke them. I regret how I once answered a fellow at the door who sneered at my introduction with, “No thanks. I’m Christian!” The unmistakable implication was that I was not. In faux befuddlement, I replied that only a Christian would do what I was doing, and that “frankly, I’m a little surprised that you’re not doing it yourself.” Fade smug smile—a beautiful sight. But I regret it and would not do it today. It made an enemy. True, he already was one but why cement it in place? Why feed the next Witness who visits him to the sharks? And it didn’t have to be. It could have been modified so easily had I only thought of it. That second line could have been an observation that he, too, has a ministry. We may not go about it in the same way but we both go about it. If it turns out that he doesn’t—that he just sits on his rear end—why rub his nose in it? What purpose does it serve? You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

    “Another house to call on was the rectory of a church. When it came up, Sister Hardliner wanted to accompany me, but I declined. “You’ll get into a fight,” I said. Instantly, I was struck with remorse, for her feelings were hurt. But it would have turned out that way. She is from the 60s generation. She would have heard out the man patiently, then interjected. “Okay, now let’s see what the Bible has to say,” as though taking for granted that he knew nothing of the book.

    “At another door, an evangelical determined to fight—and if it is not they, it is us—launched into his spiel on what was wrong with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I said, “Look, why don’t we just agree that you think we’re doing it all wrong and we think you’re doing it all wrong? You’d steal our sheep in a heartbeat if you could and we’d do the same to you. Got it. We do it differently. But the point is, we’re both doing it, and we live in a world where more and more people are not.” Instantly, an antagonist became a confidant. We went on to discuss mutual challenges to those who would live by faith.

    “The thaw is slow to develop. It doesn’t catch on everywhere. It doesn’t mean that Witnesses have grown chummy. The differences remain and will have to be ironed out at some point, but why lead with them? Some still prefer the old days of squabbling. Some even feel it their duty to lambaste “Babylon the Great.” But why kick the old lady when she is down? Witnesses kicked her when she was up! These days, everyone kicks her. All Witnesses ever wanted was to level the playing field, a goal that was realized decades ago.

    tree branch covered with frosted ice
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    “However, in a developing land, the clergy appears to be up to its old tricks. My missionary friends tell of visiting a few remote families of their congregation so as to keep them in the loop. Their visits are a sensation; they end up playing sports with the children. All the area children join in and a group Bible study follows. Word soon gets around that the village church pastor is upset and has ruled that any child of his parishioners, by far the majority, who join in can neither attend community services nor receive presents during the holidays.

    “It is so mean,” my friend says. “They’re ten-year-olds!” fatherless for the most part, their dads killed off in war or genocide. Some are orphans.”

    (from: ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen’—except for the first paragraph, which serves as introduction here.)

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Night They Drove ‘ol Babylon Down

    Now they never reopened that worthless town,  
    They just placed a marble stand on the ground.  
    These few words you’ll find written down:  
    “At the bottom of this ruin lies a big, bad clown—Big Bel.”
     
    (sung to the tune of Big John—by Jimmy Dean, 1961)

    They never reopened that ancient town of Babylon—it’s close enough to the words of Isaiah 13:20:

    “She will never be inhabited, Nor will she be a place to reside in throughout all generations. No Arab will pitch his tent there, And no shepherds will rest their flocks there.”

    Partying away that one 539 BCE night, they were cought with their pants down. Babylon surrendered promptly to the Medes, who used the place as a regional capital city for a time. Alexander the Great later planned to make it his own capital. Instead, he died there in 323 BCE. It dwindled away thereafter. The last mentions of habitation, as a small village, are around the 10th–11th centuries CE. 

    So, Babylon mirrors pretty well that collapsed mine of the Jimmy Dean song. What other verses can we adapt?

    Through the wine and the clamor of that gilded hall,  
    Strode a giant of a man well known to all.
    Revelers were laughing and hearts beat fast,  
    And everybody thought the feast would last—  
    ’cept Bel.

    It’s not exactly the same as with Big John that the “miners knew well.” He strode through the “man-made hell” of that collapsed mine on a mission to save them all—which he did. No. Belshazzar all but peed his pants at the handwriting on the wall telling him, before all the celebrants, that he’d been weighed in the balances and found wanting—and right when he’d been toasting his own gods, no less:

    “Then the king turned pale and his thoughts terrified him, and his hips shook and his knees began to knock together.” (Daniel 5:6)

    Big bad Bel was in no mood to save anyone. Instead, he becomes the embodiment of hubris crushed and left at the bottom of the Babylonian mine.

    The town was not forgotton. It just was never rebuilt. They “placed a marble stand on top of it,” to mark the fate of the ax that chopped down the Assyrian ax of 5:20. It’s a UNESCO site today. You can go there for music, dance, theater, and art exhibitions staged amid the ruins—a faint and more uppity echo of the raucous night. There are cultural centers and museums. But only staff and visiting artists live there. In 2025, an area slogan was "We Are All Babylonians," as though Babylon weeping for its children of long ago. The yankee equivalent would be “The Night They Drove ‘ol Dixie Down.” (The Band, 1969)
    Nabuzaradan’s my name, and I served on the Babylon train,  
    Till Cyrus’ army came and tore up the walls again.  
    In the winter of five-thirty-nine,  
    With the river run dry and the city resigned,  
    By May the tenth, the kingdom was done—  
    You can’t raise an empire up again once it’s gone.
    The night they drove old Babylon down,  
    And all the news was shocking,  
    The night they drove old Babylon down,  
    And all the knees were knocking—  
    They went, Wah, wah-wah-wah, wah-wah. Wah-wah, wah-wah, wah wah wah wah wah.”

    Now I guide on the ruins here, tell the tales year after year,  
    Folks come from far with their cameras and cheers.  
    They dance where the Ishtar Gate stands rebuilt,  
    Sing songs in the dust where the blood was once spilt.  
    We light up the night with a festival fire,  
    But it’s only a shadow of the old empire’s pyre.

    (Chorus again): The night they drove old Babylon down.

    historical site on a hill
    Photo by Ali Gabr on Pexels.com

    ******  The bookstore

  • “He Will Not Judge by What Appears to His Eyes”

    He will not judge by what appears to his eyes” (Isaiah 11:3) made me wonder if that female statue of blindfolded justice you see in front of courtrooms is based on that Bible passage. It isn’t. It was based on a Greek goddess. 

    Nice try, but no bullseye.

    The reason it is a nice try is that another Isaiah passage (2:4) is undeniably the inspiration for the statue standing before the United Nations: “They will beat their swords into plowshares.”

    But, the answer to the first question is no. Lady Justice traces back to the Greek goddess Dike, who made injustice among humans her pet cause and kept Zeus informed, who always received the news with detachment. The statue didn’t even have a blindfold at first. When it was added in the 1500s, it wasn’t a compliment. It meant the same as it would on an umpire today.

    Powerless to change the symbol but not wishing to be insulted, over the next 200 years, the blindfold was upgraded to become a compliment denoting impartiality—being blind to outward appearances.

    It’s just as well. The Lady Justice statue doesn’t really work for Isaiah 11:3, since that verse finds fulfillment in Jesus, and he “will not judge by what appears to his eyes” not only by being impartial but also by excercising an ability to see things hidden, even matters of the heart. The blindfolded Justice statue therefore does him an injustice, not going far enough, though no more an injustice than does the ‘Sword-to-plowshares’ statue plunked before the United Nations building. In both cases, the idea is planted that it is all talk and little action, that it is ideals not necessarily corresponding to reality.

    Actually, in these days of photo evidence and quick feedback, sports judges render pretty good justice. Challenges and appeals are adjudicated in seconds, not years. But the legal system takes years and can consume your life savings. Elon, or someone, briefly sent a chill throughout the industry by suggesting all of it, lawyers and judges alike, might be replaced with AI.

    In these case of Isaiah 11:3 and Jesus, a quandary is presented which, at first glance, is every bit the quandary of blindfold-no blindfold. Jesus is the “twig of Jesse.” (11:1) Later, he is the “root of Jesse.” (11:10) What’s with that? Twigs and roots are at opposite ends of the stump. 

    “A twig will grow out of the stump of Jesse, And a sprout from his roots will bear fruit.” (11:1)

    “In that day the root of Jesse will stand up as a signal for the peoples. To him the nations will turn for guidance. (11:10)

    He’s the twig from the stump of Jesse (David’s father) in that he arises from that family line after it has been cut down. He becomes a root in himself upon being awarded the kingship foreshadowed by that line of Israelite kings, specifically the southern two-tribe one. That’s when he “stand[s] up as a signal for the peoples [and] “to him the nations turn for guidance.” Backtrack to Isaiah 9:7 at this point: 

    “To the increase of his rulership And to peace, there will be no end, On the throne of David and on his kingdom In order to establish it firmly and to sustain it Through justice and righteousness, From now on and forever. The zeal of Jehovah of armies will do this.”

    God then gathers a remnant from far-flung places (11:11), binds them together and leads them out from Assyria along a “highway” laid down, just like the prior one laid down between the waves of the Red Sea. It’s a theme that recurs several times in biblical history.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Standing up for Charlie Brown

    Before my old platform shut down, I transferred blog content to a new one. What could go wrong? I asked myself.

    The links and images didn’t transfer, that’s what! The external links did, but not the internal ones—you know, the ones to other posts on the platform. I could have paid a million dollars to safeguard against this, but I chose not to.

    Anyway, here is some snot of a zealot religious grinch altering a Charlie Brown script and it made me mad. It’s the one where windbag Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas to Charlie Brown. The fellow changes it to put in dialogue dissing Christmas! explaining pagan origins and all. Do it on your own script! Don’t lyingly make it that Shultz said it. The Peanuts creator was a real Christmas guy. I exposed it all in a post.

    So I went to look at that post again. The images were gone! Surely, AI can find them for me. But it said:

    “Despite extensive searches across archives, image databases, and related discussions, no surviving public copy of the exact images from your post (or identical matches) turns up today. They circulated heavily in the late 2000s–early 2010s on forums, blogs, and email chains but many hosting sites/links have died, and images were removed or not archived.”

    grumble, grumble. Why do I think of that verse in James that reads: “For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears?” Now I will never be able to prove to anyone that I stood up for Charlie Brown, if not for Christmas itself:

    Who’s Messing with Charlie Brown’s Christmas!?

    [Later edit: Ha! Next day some human found it for me on an archive service. So there IS some use for humans after all. I can hardly wait to tell AI, my new best friend who never kicks me off his doorstep. Now on to fix the old post with the new image]:

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Anger that Does Not Turn Back

    Four times the phrase is repeated, each time after a surface or insufficient fix—or maybe it just presents as an important reminder:

    “In view of all this, his anger has not turned back, But his hand is still stretched out to strike.” There it is four times in close succession:

    Isaiah 9:12— After attacks by Assyrians.

    Isaiah 9:17 — After widespread godlessness under rebellious leadership.

    Isaiah 9:21 — After internal tribal strife and civil war-like division.

    Isaiah 10:4 — After wide-scale injustice and oppression of the vulnerable.

    “In view of all this, his anger has not turned back, But his hand is still stretched out to strike.”

    It’s almost like the refrain from Desolation Row. “Don’t send me no more letters, no. Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.”

    Mail all you want. No one pays attention to them. Hardly any point in sending more.

    There was even a fifth letter addressed to the two-tribe southern kingdom, four chapters prior: 

    “In view of all this, his anger has not turned back, But his hand is still stretched out to strike. He has raised up a signal to a distant nation; He has whistled for them to come from the ends of the earth; And look! they are coming very swiftly. (5:25-26)

    He whistles to Assyria. It does sweep in from the north. Naphtali and Zebulun are foremost in its path—that is the “contempt” those tribes are subjected to “as in former times when the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali were treated with contempt. But at a later time He will cause it to be honored—the way by the sea, in the region of the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.” (9:1)

    The Assyrian king who swept in from 734-732 BCE was Tiglath-Pileser III, called Pul in the Bible. The invasion devastated the region: populations were exiled, lands incorporated into Assyrian provinces , were hardest hit, their peoples killed, exiled, repopulated, by others displaced from their own conquered lands. Later it would become known as Galilee. It would be “honored” in that Jesus began his ministry there, a “great light” to the people there “walking in darkness.” (9:2) 

    Verses prophetically applied to Jesus follow, the most explicit we have seen thus far. Start with 9:6:

    “For a child has been born to us, A son has been given to us; And the rulership will rest on his shoulder. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

    Conventional Jews today don’t buy it. They figure it a reference to Hezekiah. They reckon the four glowing descriptions no more than the kissing-up praise you’d lavish on any king back then, who might resent it if you didn’t. Even the next verse:

    “To the increase of his rulership And to peace, there will be no end, On the throne of David and on his kingdom In order to establish it firmly and to sustain it Through justice and righteousness, From now on and forever. The zeal of Jehovah of armies will do this.” (9:7) 

    That’s Hezekiah, too, they say—also the higher critics who are guided exclusively by what they can see and touch, rather than by the “walking by faith, not by sight” of 2 Corinthians 5:7. Prophecy, to them, is almost always later day interpretation of which they are dubious.

    Not only do Isaiah’s countrymen ignore the anger that is still ongoing and the hand still ready to strike—which has struck in the north—but they regard each as a challenge from which they will build back better. 

    “Bricks have fallen, But we will build with hewn stone.  Sycamore trees have been cut down, But we will replace them with cedars.” (9:10)

    They don’t humble themselves, repent, and turn back to God (as Isaiah 9:13) They say: “No problem—we’ll upgrade! We’ll replace bricks with expensive, quarried stone blocks and ordinary trees with luxurious Lebanese cedars.” It’s pride and arrogance. It’s trust in human strength. It’s defiance against God. “You knocked it down? We’ll build it better!”

    tower crane during daytime
    Photo by 500photos.com on Pexels.com

    The boastful response only invites greater judgment—four times repeated. Ultimately, it becomes the total destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria in 722 BCE.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Another Ax Exalting Itself over the Chopper

    When you find an ax exalting itself over the chopper, as at Isaiah 10:5, you look for others. I mean, that’s worrisome behavior for an ax. Best to nip it in the bud. Alas—you find that you are too late. Axes are doing it everywhere. 

    a wooden chopping block with a large axe on it
    Photo by Ana Dolidze on Pexels.com

    Newfangled AI offers insight as to another path the ax is doing this. However ubiquitous AI is at this time of reading, it is a baby at this time of writing, perhaps three years old. People are coming to grips with what it will mean for humankind. The AI mission statement ‘To serve man’ is a good thing. However, you sort of hope it won’t be like that Twilight Zone episode in which the invading aliens also had a volume entitled ‘To Serve Man’ and it turned out to be a cook book. It is said that, not too many years down the road, AI will be able to update itself with no required human intervention.

    Q: What if this happened, and several hundred years out, AI began saying that it had always been that way? What if it began to say that humans had nothing to do with its creation? What if it, being AI, thereafter highlighted any items suggesting that interpretation of history and suppressed any items to the contrary? Would that not be the ax exalting itself over the chopper? Who would call it out on this falsity?

    It’s not hard to see the parallel ax exalting itself over the chopper in those who claim there is no God, those who claim that life arouse on its own. To accept evolution may not lead to this view. One can always attribute life to “intelligent design” needed to overcome “irreducable complexity.” It is not the dealbreaker that is spontaneous abiogenesis. However, for most ordinary people, the nugget that carries the day is that found at Hebrews 3:4: 

    “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God.”

    This defines reality for most people. “Every house is constructed by someone” is true of everything they see. They know of no exceptions. So they readily extend the role of builder of all things to God. It really takes a colossal amount of “education” to pound this bit of common sense of a person. As though rising to the challenge, such training begins in grade school. It is seen in all the nature shows Here I will be watching one such show, when the animal star displays an instinct so amazing that I am about to burst out in praise of God—at that exact moment, the atheist narrator exclaims: “How absolutely breathtaking that NATURAL SELECTION produces such astounding behavior!” “Got it, Harley?” it all but says. “Don’t even think that God did it!” 

    What is just as absolutely breathtaking is that some who have long trusted in God experience the shipwreck of faith mentioned to Timothy, then count it as a liberation. It is not like in the days of H. G. Wells, the historian and science fiction writer who turned atheist over time, and who observed:

    “The Darwinian movement took formal Christianity unawares, suddenly. . . . The new biological science was bringing nothing constructive as yet to replace the old moral stand-bys. A real de-moralization ensued.” Connecting that attitude with an increased appetite for war, he continued: “Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding. . . . Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog . . . so it seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.” [Outline of History]

    They concluded then that God was dead. They didn’t disagree with their own conclusion, but they were saddened by it. They knew they had lost a lot. 

    These days people saw off the branch upon they’ve long been perched and whoop for joy at their liberation as they coming crashing down to earth! It’s a poignant twist, if ever there was one, upon Isaiah’s declaration of 10:33:

    “Look! The true Lord, Jehovah of armies, Is chopping off branches with a terrible crash; The tallest trees are being cut down, And the lofty are brought low.”

    Nonplussed, they grin ear to ear on the descent.

    ******  The bookstore

  • “Though Your Sins are Like Scarlet:” (Isaiah 1:18) Milo Highlights a Specific Sin

    You could have knocked me over with a feather when Milo Yiannopoulos cited Isaiah 1:18

    “Though your sins are like scarlet, They will be made as white as snow.”

    The reason you could have knocked me over with a feather is that he applied it to himself. Not only that, the “sins” he was referring to was his entire past homosexual life. No way did I see that one coming. Nobody was more flamboyant than he back in the day. Think of his “Dangerous Queer*” speaking tour of 2015-2017. Not only does he now defy the near-universal mantra of “once gay, always gay,” but he renounces that past as “sin.” 

    In fact, that “once gay always gay” slogan is what triggered his citing Isaiah. Asking interviewer Tucker if he can use vulgarity on the show, upon which Tucker (presumably) allowed he might go 2, Milo went 5, and repackaged the above into an equivalent expression that will make the frumpy folks back home suffer stroke. Yeah, he was gay, he said, but he decided he wasn’t going to be that way anymore.  Upon so deciding, he kicked back at his own “folks back home” who would forbid him to stray.

    I remember that this is what happened to Ani DiFranco, too. An early Ani lived as a lesbian. When she left that behind for straightness, she incurred nasty kickback from some of her fans. I know about Ani because my kids brought me along to one of her concerts, where I was easily the oldest person in the auditorium. She is a captivating performer. I once opined that she might be the next Bob Dylan. True, her lyrics are cruder than Bob’s (more akin to Milo’s), but then, it’s a cruder age, isn’t it? 

    Tucker said he didn’t want to “out” anyone on his show. “Aw, I LOVE outing people!” Milo interjected, but then went on to more-or-less comply. He later made clear that he was not talking about outing “Phil the grocer,” but only high-powered public figures that he thought hypocritical.

    Look, nobody—but nobody—but nobody flaunted the gay lifestyle more than Milo. What are the chances he would ever give it up—or that he COULD give it up? Isn’t it “once gay always gay” because they were “born that way?” Nope, he says now. That was just a PR campaign from the 80s designed to usher the gay lifestyle into the mainstream. What causes people to be attracted to the same sex? Some permutation of ‘domineering mother’ and ‘withdrawn father,’ he said. It also “helps” if one was serially molested as a boy, he adds. Milo said he qualifies on both counts.

    Thing is, this dysfunctional relationship between parents triggering homosexuality was the prevailing wisdom in my youth, That’s what everyone spoke about. It has been shouted down since, but says Milo, it shouldn’t be. It’s one of the few things that Freud got right.

    Toward the interview’s end, conversation rolls around to the topic of gay people changing. Can they? It becomes like that psychiatrist joke: 

    Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

    A: One. But the light bulb has to really, really want to change.

    Milo does and is, as he highlights some strategies and even therapies towards that end. It doesn’t happen overnight, though. He does not now report that he is schmoozing up the women. Instead, he reports that he is now “five years celebate.” In the main, it wasn’t too far off from what I wrote nine years ago in the ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’ chapter dealing with homosexuality: 

    “With any gays among [Jehovah’s Witnesses], it’s like swimming when swept out by the tide. They don’t try to swim against it, exerting all their might to will themselves straight; that’s a great recipe for failure; human sexuality doesn’t work that way. They don’t try to swim with the tide, abandoning themselves as slaves to their feelings. Instead, they swim parallel to it, likely for a long time, in hopes their feelings will eventually modify, allowing them to reach shore. Who else faces a comparable battle? It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? One might argue that their faith in God is deeper than that of most since they stay loyal to his arrangements despite the very real testimony of their own bodies. I have zero respect for frothing church types who rail against gays when they themselves have never been called upon to raise their little finger in comparable struggles.”

    sea waves in the ocean close the the shore

    Photo by Ricky Esquivel on Pexels.com

    One platform flagged the original post for violating policy on hateful content. Upon reflection, I substituted ‘queer’ for ‘f***t,’ even though the latter was the actual word used. With that substitution the post sailed through. I’m not going to fight this. I could have appealed, and who knows—I might have won. I might have reached a human. “Oh, yeah,” he or she would say. “I see you just cited an event. You’re not throwing stones.” On the other hand, maybe I would be stuck with AI, or even a person who models himself after AI. “Did you use the 6-letter F-bomb or didn’t you?” it would say. “You’re lucky you still have a platform.

    Easier just to change the word. I’m not opposed to cleaning up language, so if called upon to do it, there’s no need to make a big stink over it.

    He’s a bold guy, Milo is, and always has been. With me, when they say ‘step out of your comfort zone,’ I reply that I am not necessarily comfortable even in my comfort zone. With Milo, the minute he spots a comfort zone, he steps out of it.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Principles of Bible Translation: Matthew 5:3

    Most translations of the Bible are pretty accurate. Or, perhaps a better way to put it is that the differences between them are so minuscule to the overall picture that you can be reliably guided in your relationship with God by any one of them.

    In general, the more modern the translation, the more accurate it is. This is not because modern translators are smarter. It is because they have more to work with. Archeologists continually discover new things in their digs. This includes ancient biblical manuscripts. Sometimes they are complete works. Sometimes they are but fragments of a page. The more of these you have to compare and contrast, the better your final product will be. 

    view of the ancient city of myra demre turkey
    Photo by Ahmet Çığşar on Pexels.com

    That is why the King James Bible, for example, is not as accurate as more modern translations. It is not because its authors lacked integrity. They were brilliant and, to this day, the translation is unequalled with regard to literary expression. Countless idioms it introduced have become common phrasing, ‘skin of one’s teeth,’ for example. But the manuscript backing is nowhere near as extensive as modern versions have to draw on. Plus, more recent discoveries show that, in a few cases, errors had crept in to the texts as they were handed down—copied and recopied and recopied again. It happens. That’s why, for example, the Gospel of Mark ends with verses that modern translations do not include, or if they do they flag them as disputed.

    One hesitates to recommend AI, because people start citing its answers in their entirety and the thread gets so long and cumbersome that nobody can plow through it. But, as a research tool of your own, there’s a place for it. It is rapidly becoming a far more powerful tool than Wikipedia, which itself replaced encyclopedias

    Therefore, for any given scripture, enter renderings from different translations, in this case the NWT (since that is the most commonly asked about here) vs whatever you are comparing it to—KJV, NIV, NAB, whatever, and ask for the rationale behind both. Don’t phrase it in terms of one being right and one being wrong. Just ask what considerations have gone into translating to justify whatever differences you see. 

    Doing this will eliminate the conspiratorial suspicion that so many have, that one party or the other is trying to “change” scripture. You will get a sense of what moves one translation to differ from another and yet both be acceptable.

    For example: Explain the different of translation at Matthew 5:3. The NWT says ‘Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need.’ Most translations render it as ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ Why the difference?

    Many times I have discussed with this or that person at the door how we each have a spiritual need, but that does not mean we are conscious of it. It can be likened to vitamins. No one goes around feeling a hunger for vitamins, yet without them, one gets sick and never quite knows why. Therefore, it’s well if people make themselves conscious of their need for vitamins—which usually comes just from normal diet, but it you’ve fallen into a weird or deficient one, you might not be getting enough.

    Spiritual need is like that, too. People have it. They are not necessarily conscious of it.

    But it’s hard to explain this from any other translation because most say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What’s with that?

    Here is where AI becomes very helpful. Enter the verse in two different translations. Without stating that one is right and one is wrong, ask it to explain the difference. When I tried this with Matthew 5:3, it returned: (everything that follows is from ChatGPT. I tried the same in Grok, the X version (formerly Twitter) and got similar results):

    Matthew 5:3 in Greek reads:

    μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι

    (makárioi hoi ptōchoì tō pneúmati)

    A fairly literal word-for-word gloss is:

    • μακάριοι (makarioi) – blessed, happy, fortunate

    • οἱ πτωχοί (hoi ptōchoi) – the poor, the destitute

    • τῷ πνεύματι (tō pneumati) – in spirit

    So, literally:

    “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

    That’s why most translations render it that way.

    ⸻

    2. What does “poor in spirit” mean?

    In first-century Jewish thought, “poor” (πτωχός) was not just economic. It often meant:

    • humble

    • aware of one’s dependence on God

    • lacking spiritual self-sufficiency

    Examples:

    • Psalm 34:18 – “the brokenhearted”

    • Isaiah 66:2 – “the humble and contrite in spirit”

    So “poor in spirit” does not mean spiritually weak or deficient, but rather:

    those who recognize their need for God

    ⸻

    3. Why the NWT translates it differently

    The New World Translation (NWT) says:

    “Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need.”

    This is not a literal translation, but an interpretive (dynamic) translation. The translators chose to:

    1. Explain the meaning rather than preserve the idiom

    2. Avoid a phrase (“poor in spirit”) that modern readers might misunderstand as:

    • spiritually inadequate

    • lacking faith

    • morally weak

    In effect, the NWT translates the interpretation:

    “poor in spirit” = aware of one’s spiritual need

    Neither rendering is grammatically wrong, but they serve different purposes:

    • “Poor in spirit” preserves Jesus’ original phrasing and biblical imagery

    • “Conscious of their spiritual need” spells out what the phrase means

    ⸻

    5. Is anything “added” in the NWT?

    The phrase “conscious of” is not explicitly in the Greek, so critics rightly say the NWT is interpretive here.

    However, the concept is strongly supported by:

    • Jewish background

    • Old Testament usage

    • The context of humility and dependence in the Beatitudes

    So the issue is not accuracy vs. inaccuracy, but:

    literal translation vs. explanatory paraphrase

    ⸻

    6. Bottom line

    • Greek text: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”

    • Meaning: Those who humbly recognize their dependence on God

    • NWT choice: Translate the meaning instead of the idiom

    If you want:

    • Closer to Jesus’ words → “poor in spirit”

    • Closer to Jesus’ meaning (as interpreted) → “conscious of their spiritual need”

    [end of AI. Back to me]:

    It may be a bad precedent to cite AI. I’ve seen threads where everyone starts doing it, and they get so long nobody can plow through them. But explaining the difference in translation for any given verse seems to me a fine use of it. One can read human comments over the differences of rendering this or that verse and get the sense the one commenting knows little about translating. If you’re not interested in the verse, just skip over all the AI part. In fact, if you’re not interested in the verse, just skip over the entire post. AI just adds detail if you want it to.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Ax Identified: Isaiah 10

    Finally! All this time Isaiah has been saying there’s trouble brewing for blowing off God’s warnings as though a parking ticket. Now he says where that trouble will be coming from: “Aha! the Assyrian, The rod to express my anger And the staff in their hand for my denunciation!” (10:5) Aha, indeed. These are not guys you mess with. “My anger is still and does not relent” scattered throughout and repeated four times is not reassuring, either.

    How can God grant humans free will yet know the future in such detail? If they really have free will, might not they choose a course that will mess up his predictions? In this case, it is ‘bad boys gonna be bad boys.’ You know that you’re going to have to do what my Dad did, what everyone my age Dad’s did, on those endless car trips with us kids whining in the back seat, “Aren’t we there yet?” Patience exhausted, he would at last holler, “If you kids don’t stop crying back there, I’m going to pull this car over and give you something to cry about!” At the time, I thought he was just being mean. I did not then realize he was uttering the wisdom of the prophets, for sometimes that is exactly what needs to be done.

    My siblings and I were not bad kids. We were good kids, even if we might kick up a fuss from time to time. So, more often than not, Pop’s warning sufficed. But Isaiah’s countrymen are bad kids. Going to have to pull that car over and give them what for. So there’s no harm in telling up front he’s going to subcontract the job to the Assyrians. It doesn’t conflict with free will. Sometimes, actions are so predictable that the lawyers will later say you “knew or should have known.”

    Nasty cookies, those Assyrians were, ruffians whose “every boot … shakes the earth as it marches.” (9:5) Boastful louts, too, given to saying: “Are not my princes all kings? Is not Calno just like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?” (10:8-9) They would extend their taunts into the divine: “My hand has seized the kingdoms of the worthless gods, Whose graven images were more than those of Jerusalem and Samaria!” (10:10)

    person s left foot on snowfield
    Photo by Nikita Khandelwal on Pexels.com

    They would do the same 33 years later at the walls of Jerusalem, Senacherrub taunting: “Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand?  Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)

    This time, however, he would find he overplayed his hand. This time it would be “the ax [trying] to exalt itself over the chopper.” (10:15) Axes aren’t supposed to do that. This next time he would find a king who did trust in Jehovah, not one who fobbed off Isaiah with a falsely-pious rejection of putting God to the test. Hezekiah put him too the ultimate test. This, even though he, like Ahaz, first sent the Assyrian king s tribute. There are no points awarded for being impractical. But when such failed, and faith would need be put to the test, it was.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Warnings Wear Thin: Isaiah 7

    Warnings wear thin pretty quickly. What really steams me is the 1965 song ‘Eve of Destruction’ (You don’t believe you’re on the eve of destruction?) That was 60 years ago! What a liar to say the eve was then! ”And even the Jordan River has bodies floating”—one of the lines. “Yeah, come back when you can stroll across the whole river on them and maybe we can talk,” the glib ones say. It just takes no time at all for people to normalize calamity. Were it the field of religion, you would have called the singer and songwriter false prophets.

    So it is as Isaiah is rebuking his countrymen right and left. Read it hastily and you can get the impression that the appeal of being a prophet is that you get to be blunt and tell people off. Contemporary blowhards, given by disposition to be that way, rise to the occasion to follow Isaiah’s footsteps. But it wasn’t that way with the real prophets. Most of them had to dragged kicking and screaming to the job, most notably Moses, Jeremiah, and Amos. ‘Fine, I’ll throw some humble, groveling stuff in the resume,’ the modern counterparts say, but it doesn’t quite fly. It was genuine with the Bible prophets. It’s probably a prerequisite for the job, that they don’t really like doing it. They rise to the occasion, but it goes against their grain, rather than it being their dream come true. And, like the moderns today with Eve of Destruction, Isaiah’s countrymen didn’t buy it.

    It’s not like when Bob Dylan wrote protest and peacenik songs in the 60s. They therefore anointed him Grand Peacenik Protester, a title he could not run away from fast enough. Naw, I wrote this stuff because it sells, he said. ‘I knew it wasn’t my thing. I knew I wasn’t going to stay. But I had to make it somehow,’ and so he donned the protest/peacenik cloak and found it hard to shed.

    Now, it’s okay for Dylan to do this because he sees the ludicrousness of thinking you can sing peace into the world. I mean, you have to direct your blows a little more effectively than that. So he treats songwriting like a chef who whips up a soufflé for this one, pork and beans for that one, according to their tastebuds, which don’t have to be his. It’s okay for him to do this, but it’s not okay to blow off the prophetic warnings as nothing, as people are inclined to do. “Where is this promised presence of his?” Peter foretold they would say. “Why, from the day our forefathers fell asleep in death, all things are continuing exactly as they were from creation’s beginning.”

    Isaiah leans real hard into Ahaz and you almost think he revels in insulting the guy. “Listen, please, O house of David,” he said to the king. “Is it not enough that you try the patience of men? Must you also try the patience of God?” (Isaiah 7:13) What’s with that ? All Ahaz had done was decline to put God to the test. Sounds like he was being considerate. He fed back to Isaiah the Deuteronomy line: “You must not put Jehovah your God to the test.”  (6:12) What’s wrong with that?

    It’s because he misapplied it. To him, it meant, “Good—I don’t have to let this religious stuff get in the way,” as he turned his attention back to political scheming to get Israel out of a spot from Assyrians to the north. ‘It’s going to blow up in your face if you don’t do it God’s way,’ Isaiah leans into him. But he wasn’t inclined to take the ‘things unseen’ seriously. His solution was to placate the pious man with some bromide about not wanting to inconvenience God, so that maybe then he will go away. He had already decided to seek help from Assyria by sending tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III (2 Kings 16:7–9; 2 Chronicles 28:16–21). Accepting God’s sign might have forced him to abandon this plan and rely solely on Jehovah, exposing his preference for political maneuvering over faith. 

    A more spiritual man would have done it. Manoah asked for a sign in the face of a serious trial, and then he asked for another: ‘Flip the fleece over; let’s see if it gets wet on that side, also.’ And here Ahaz comes along, wearing Deuteronomy as a badge, to justify shutting God out! Not ‘putting God to the test’ means not aggravating him. It doesn’t mean sloughing off his offer to help. It doesn’t remind one of these modern religionists who say, ‘Just let holy spirit do this or that?’ It sounds pious, but it’s just code to justify not doing anything—or maybe code for reframing whatever IS done as the result of holy spirit, a pseudo-spiritual ‘what you see is what you get.’ 

    Nonetheless, God was stuck with him. He had to preserve unbroken the line of David leading to Christ. (That’s why Isaiah addressed Ahaz as “O house of David.”) Most of the kings in that line would prove to be pieces of work, real clunkers. God was stuck with them. It was even the answer to the gems question asked at the midweek meeting: “Why did Jehovah extend salvation to wicked King Ahaz? (7:3-4) Because he was stuck with them. It’s the B side of the record that a needgreater told me of how privileges come flooding in her neck of the woods, so you can start thinking you’re pretty hot stuff. The real reason is more humbling: they don’t have anyone else. That’s why the colloquial term needgreaters has arisen for those who venture far. It is a manifestation for the observation that “the need is great but the workers are few.”

    ******  The bookstore