Missing Letters
Sometimes they matter.
Name?
Todd.
I would pick up my cup of coffee and see another name scrawled on the side of the cup. Tod. Tom. Scott.
“Scott?!” I would shout in my head. It is easy to miss the second d. Even substitute both ds for an m. Maybe it’s the phonics. Todd. Scott. Meh.
When I was much younger, the lack of precision bothered me. Over time, not so much. In fact, in those instances where it mattered, and Tom had been written down or typed, I smile and correct with a grin and say, “My Dad’s name is Tom. I don’t mind the confusion.”
Scribal Errors?
More than one New Testament Greek student faced a personal crisis learning that those asterisks in modern Bibles noted, “The earliest manuscripts do not contain these verses.” Or, “Some manuscripts have . . ..” How did that happen? Whole courses and fields of study are given to textual variations. Over time, we learn the slight differences have not altered the text under consideration to consider it/them spurious.
One feature of Bible translation that cannot be attributed to a copyist is the use of homonyms. That is, words that sound the same but are spelled differently. We might refer to this as a play on words or a double entendre.
Hearing the Difference
The lyricist, poet, and parable writer who gives us Isaiah 5:1-7 does just this here,
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Old Testament scholar Walter Breuggemann, points out, as do a number of other commentators on Isaiah 5, that the words translated justice and bloodshed have similar sounds. Listening for the missing, or different, letter is key. We would transliterate the two words mishpat (justice) and mishpah (bloodshed). Visually, we easily see the difference. Those who read Hebrew would too. When the prophets delivered the words from God to the people, it was heard, not read. These were not Pauline circular letters.
Whether on paper seen by the eyes or heard in the ears, the people would have picked up the difference. Reading English translations, we miss the play on words. Instead we clearly see that the vineyard builder expected justice but saw bloodshed. Justice and bloodshed do not sound the same.
Slow Bleed
Continuing the conversation initiated by God through the prophet in Isaiah 1,
Come, let us argue it out (1:18)
the people hear the story, the song, the parable of the vineyard (Is. 5:1-2).
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
Wild grapes points the English reader to the missed expectations for God’s people described as bloodshed and a cry. Bloodshed has a specific meaning. Brueggemann notes of mishpah,
. . . thus the outpouring of lifeblood through exploitative social practice; that is, the kinds of economic transactions that abuse, injure, and slowly bleed the poor to death.
While this reflection began several years ago and has been collecting dust, it caught my eye again when considering John 15:1.
I am the true vine.
Jesus’s emphatic claim argues it out. Where Ancient Israel had not lived up to justice but instead yielded bloodshed, Jesus would suffer bloodshed and bring justice - set everything right. In this way, we understand Jesus to be the True, Real Israelite into whom we are taken and given life.
Rather than view Jesus as a replacement for Ancient Israel, the Apostle Paul asserted that Jesus is the fulfillment of justice for us all. Jesus is the One for the many. Pointing out that Jesus is the One causes some to bristle at its exclusivity. But the Apostle’s argument is that death came to the many through one, and so now life comes to the many through the One - Jew and Gentile, all of us.
The Real.
Jesus’s I AM that leads off John 15 puts an end to our scurrying around, hoping that one day bloodshed ends and justice comes. Our longing for everything right is met in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Real in our desert of bloodshed. And while the play on words in Isaiah 5 makes clear the disappointment in the wild grapes, a different letter alters it all for us.
I.
Jesus’s “I.”
Jesus is our missing letter; the I we need to redeem, restore, and reclaim our future is in him who is for us the True, Real Vine.
Jesus gets our letters right.
And it matters.
Great post Todd