The word of the day is…
ἔχθρα, ἔχθρας, ἡ
Classical Greek, echthrā, echthrās, hē, 1. enmity
The word of the day is…
πλουτέω, πλουτήσω, ἐπλούτησα, πεπλούτηκα, -, -
Classical Greek, plouteō, ploutēsō, eploutēsa, peploutēka, -, -, 1. to be rich
7.7 Αἰτεῖτε, καὶ δοθήσεται ὑμῖν· ζητεῖτε, καὶ εὑρήσετε· κρούετε, καὶ ἀνοιγήσεται ὑμῖν. 7.8 πᾶς γὰρ ὁ αἰτῶν λαμβάνει, καὶ ὁ ζητῶν εὑρίσκει, καὶ τῷ κρούοντι ἀνοιγήσεται. 7.9 ἢ τίς ἐστιν ἐξ ὑμῶν ἄνθρωπος, ὃν αἰτήσει ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ ἄρτον, μὴ λίθον ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ; 7.10 ἢ καὶ ἰχθὺν αἰτήσει, μὴ ὄφιν ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ; 7.11 εἰ οὖν ὑμεῖς πονηροὶ ὄντες οἴδατε δόματα ἀγαθὰ διδόναι τοῖς τέκνοις ὑμῶν, πόσῳ μᾶλλον ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς δώσει ἀγαθὰ τοῖς αἰτοῦσιν αὐτόν.
7.12 Πάντα οὖν ὅσα ἐὰν θέλητε ἵνα ποιῶσιν ὑμῖν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς ποιεῖτε αὐτοῖς· οὖτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται.
7.7 Ask, and it will be given to you; Seek, and you will find; Knock, and it will be opened to you. 7.8 For every asker receives, and seeker finds, and to the knocker it will be opened. 7.9 Or what man is there among you, his son will ask him for bread, instead will give a stone to him? 7.10 Or also if he asks for a fish, will instead give him a snake? 7.11 Therefore, if you being evil know to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.
7.12 Therefore, in all things whatsoever as you wish that men would do for you, thus also you do for them; For this is the law and the prophets.
Verse 7 has three instances of a repeated pattern, a second person plural imperative followed by καὶ and a future tense verb (first and last instances in the passive, the middle instance in the active voice). Verse 8 is similar in being highly repetitive in pattern, though there are some noticeable differences. The first two expressions, “asking one” and “seeking one” are participles with a nominative article and a third person singular present tense verb. The third expression uses the same passive form of the verb in verse 7, and relies on a dative singular form of the participle and article (”to the knocking one…”). I guess the immediate question in my mind was, “Why wasn’t the first instance placed in the passive and matched with a dative form as well?” Indeed, the first instance chose to use the verb “receive” rather than “be given”. I don’t see a huge difference in meaning, but the parallelism is a little skewed.
Verse 9 and 10 both have a wonderful construction in which a relative pronoun and a negated noun/verb. Very hard to render word-for-word in English. I have chosen to use a conditional and the word, “instead.”
Verse 11 wraps up 9 and 10, saying that if we know that we will give good gifts to our children, that God certainly will do even better for his children. What must Jesus’ hearers have though when he called them evil? Did they see that the statement was identifying them in relation to God, so describing their distance from God’s holiness, or did they take it as criticism and harsh rebuke? Seems like a harsh statement to me - but it is clear that in comparison to the way God blesses even those who I reject, my own gift-giving is only a shadow of his grace-filled actions.
I was going to leave verse 12 for another post, but the word οὖν made me decide to keep it. This connective indicates that the next comment Jesus makes gains credence from what has come before - that our treatment of others how we would like to be treated should be related to our knowledge of the ultimate gift-giver. If we would give good gifts to our children - and desire good gifts be given to us - then that ought to be the pattern we follow with all those we encounter. We should be open handed - those who ask ought to receive from us. And I might even suggest, without indebting themselves monetarily or personally, though Jesus is not stressing the point here. If we were asking and in need, wouldn’t we want that?
Usually translations add “sum up” or “all” to the last expression “the law and the prophets”. I have chosen not to do so, as it isn’t present - but the words themselves speak clearly enough. This teaching - that we ought take into account how we would desire to be treated when dealing with others - is fully compatible with the law and the prophets. But to be honest, until we truly love others how we want to be loved, we will not treat them the way we would want to be treated.
The word of the day is…
πένομαι, -, -, -, -, -
Classical Greek, penomai, -, -, -, -, -, 1. to be poor. This verb is found only in the middle voice.
A lot has been going on here, and that has kept me from blogging anything substantial. For starters, I am nearing completion on a major project at work - a great portion of my thought has been directed at SharePoint, rather than Greek, Japanese, Hindi, etc. I have not completely slipped away from Greek - but I modified my own self-instruction and did some intensive verb repetition. I was having problems with remembering middle and passive verb tense endings, so I skipped the regular sentence and phrase translation and just went through all the verbs I had in my book to that point - writing out the conjugations fully. After a laundry list of verbs, I think my grasp of the endings is much more solid. During that time, I have let Matthew slip; I intend to be back blogging my Matthew work soon.
Without any intention of being critical or rehashing details, I do have to share that the last 2 months at The Mount has been unlike any I have ever experienced before. Our pastor was asked to submit his resignation - then offered a chance for reconciliation - which further events made apparent was not going to happen. This man had been my spiritual leader for over a decade. He had guided me through my college years into being a young husband and father. It was difficult to watch and directly speak to the issues that were at the center of the conflict. After three weeks of rather emotional and gut-wrenching tension for all involved, he decided to step down. I chose not to write about the details during this episode - it would have been improper and would have likely been contrary to any sense of reconciliation we were after. But since it consumed much of my thought, that meant I blogged very little.
The reason I share this is to give some basis behind what has kept me so busy in the aftermath… Our church website was down briefly due to the change, and needed to be moved to a new hosting platform, etc. I got that up; visit www.themountchurch.com. I also took the opportunity to use the new domain for our new devotionals blog (still using wordpress software, just not wordpress.com). Thanks, David, for all the help you provided. I know that things were strained, but I still appreciate your help and all the work you did.
Some great people stepped up within the body in so many areas, but I specifically want to speak to the area of web development and devotional writing. It has been really amazing to see people step forward as leaders and servants. Thanks specifically to Jeremy and Walker! You guys rock. And there are more people considering using their gifts to get involved! And to the devotional team, Lee, Brooke, Jan, Dave, and April - and Jeremy again - you guys make my day. God has blessed us in so many ways.
Seems like a lot of people are giving their “sorry’s” for not being able to blog as in yesteryear… This being my first year of blogging, I have no history on which to base any judgment; but it seems that there are cycles to most things. I hope to be back to a regular writing tempo soon.
