JEREMIAH 11-12:
Yesterday we heard important verses in chapter 9:23-24, verses that Paul quotes more than once:
“Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom,
or the powerful boast in their power,
or the rich boast in their riches.
But those who wish to boast
should boast in this alone:
that they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD …
Translation note:
12:1 “Lord, if I argued my case with you, you would [be shown//prove to] be right. Yet I must question you about matters of justice. Why are the wicked so prosperous? Why do dishonest people succeed?
PSALM 143:
It seems that prayer is very neglected these days. Oh yes, we might hear something vague about praying for victims right after some tragedy strikes. But it seems that every church has trouble keeping a prayer meeting going. I myself have trouble keeping my prayer life going. David shows in this psalm that he has learned secrets of effective prayer. Note how his prayer is very like how Jeremiah felt in the two chapters we just read.
Translation note:
9 I [come//go] to you for protection, Lord; rescue me from my enemies.
JOHN 21:
This is one of my favorite chapters. John again tells us important information not given in the other gospels. Note that there is a famous exegetical fallacy here. John does use two different words for ‘love’ in the dialog between Jesus and Peter. But this should NOT be taken— as has been so frequently taught, as showing a play on words, or that John was intending different shades of meaning. Instead the use of synonyms is just a feature of John’s style in writing. John does this for poetic variation, like the parallelism in Hebrew poetry. Another example of this in this same passage is the variation of ‘little lambs’ and ‘sheep’.
Translation notes for verses 1-15 and 22-24:
[John concealed his name, but since chapter 1 he has been hinting that the writer is an eyewitness. In the last two chapters he clearly wants it known that the writer-eyewitness is ‘the disciple Jesus loved’. (I think the reason that John and Matthew did not include themselves using the first person in the Gospels overtly is because they didn’t want to boast at the honor being an inner-circle disciple of Jesus.) It is probably quite odd in any of the world’s languages for a writer to conceal his identity using literary devices as John did. In some languages, translating these devices literally is so confusing that it is better to rephrase some verses so that the writer speaks in the first person. (Here’s an example showing why John’s literary device would be confusing: If the text says, “The disciples got into the boat,” in Indonesian and Orya and most other languages, it means the writer was not among them. For the writer to be present, one would expect something like, “We disciples got into the boat.”) Translators who make the change to first person (I/we/us) will add a footnote explaining why John used the third person instead of the first person. In my opinion, for our Daily Bible Reading podcasts, it is much clearer for listeners to use the same technique.]
22 Jesus answered him, “If I want him to live until I [return//come], what is that to you? Follow me!”
23 So a report spread among the followers of Jesus that [I//this disciple] would not die. But Jesus did not say he would not die; he said, “If I want him to live until I [return//come], what is that to you?”
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