SPEAKER_01

Hey everybody, this whole week of the 10-minute Bible hour podcast is sponsored by Dwell Audio Bible app, which I cannot vouch for strongly enough. There's a link down in the show notes below that lets you get that for yourself for a big discount if you want to, or give it away for an equally big discount if you want to. Thanks to Dwell for sponsoring the program, and thanks to you for supporting the sponsor. Did you see how that guy was when you said this? Yeah, the whole time I wanted- I I mean, I do this. I find it to be really, really fun to do the debriefing on the social situation. And that's kind of what we're doing right now in Matthew chapter three, because John the Baptist goes with this verbal flurry at the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when they show up to his desert baptism party, and there's just a ton to step into the next room after it all goes down and break down, not just because it's juicy and fun, but also because there's quite a bit of theological significance to what he says. And please make a note of this, because it's gonna be important later. It's also important because a lot of the language that John the Baptist employs, both positively and negatively, are themes and even exact phrases that we're gonna see Jesus employ as we move through his ministry. And that's not just an accident, and that's not just Jesus copying something or writing on the coattails of something that had already been demographically tested and found to be effective. There's meaning to that as well that we'll pick up as we go along. So yesterday we talked about the whole brood of vipers part of this insult that would have really driven at the identity of the religious leaders, because to suggest that they were children of anything other than Abraham would have been a startling shot across the bow. And actually, d no, shot across the bow isn't even the right word here. I mean, calling this a shot across the bow would be like calling the light speed kamikaze Star Wars thing a shot across the bow. This is an assault. They would have felt it. And however tense you imagine this scene being from 2,000 years in the future, I promise it was more tense than that. And then he gets into this language that further confirms what he meant with the whole brute of vipers thing, because that's what we're looking at today. He said, Don't say to yourselves that we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. Now, something I remember from seminary and something that I've seen in a few books is that there is a clever Hebraism here. There's a turn of a phrase in the native tongue of John the Baptist that I am not smart enough to understand. But I've heard from people way smarter than me that by arranging the word stones next to the word for children in the original language, that John is using a poetic flourish to absolutely eliminate any doubt as to what he's talking about, that being a pretty robust condemnation of the religious leaders and a pushback on their understanding of the security they had with God simply by merit of their religious relationship, religious descendancy, or ethnic descendency from Abraham. But so since I'm not really equipped to break this thing down, I'm gonna bring in a ringer. I've got a buddy named Tuvia Pollock. He lives in Jerusalem, he speaks Hebrew, he also understands old school Hebrew. We met in Jerusalem when I was there, and I go to him sometimes with questions about language things on the internet. He's awesome, knows what he's doing, went to school for this stuff. And so I caught him on the phone here just a little bit ago and asked him a bunch of questions about this. He's outside the walls literally of Jerusalem, so there's a little background noise, but I think you're gonna glean a ton from what he had to say about this passage and also what he had to say about another passage that I had a question about regarding the original Hebrew, and what he had to say about that was hugely eye-opening for me, and I think you're gonna find it beneficial as well.

unknown

Hello?

SPEAKER_01

Hi, Tuvia. How are you, man?

SPEAKER_00

Hi, Matt. How are you?

SPEAKER_01

I'm good. We're doing this thing where we're looking at Matthew chapter three, and I'm of the impression that John the Baptist is turning a clever little play on words here as he's denouncing the Pharisees and Sadducees with a play on words between the word for stone and the word for children. He says, Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and don't think you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. Can you just walk me through what that play on words would actually be?

SPEAKER_00

Hebrew is a very gendered language. Every word is either masculine or feminine. So if if you're talking in general about lots of people, then masculine is always the go-to. That's sort of just how the language has evolved.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

The word for son can also mean children. And the Hebrew word for that is vanim. Stone is Avanim. It's just like uh since B and V is basically the same letter, it's just that A in the beginning that's the only difference.

SPEAKER_01

How would I spell the Anglicized version of those two words?

SPEAKER_00

So Avanim Stone would be A V A N I M.

SPEAKER_01

Avanim.

SPEAKER_00

And Avanim. Right. And uh Banim B-A-N-I-M.

SPEAKER_01

What do you think the chances are that this was an intentional play on words or intentional uh maybe play on words isn't the right term, but he's he's using two words maybe that sound similar, or is it just a coincidence in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00

I haven't actually thought of that, but I mean when I read the Hebrew translation of the New Testament, they're using those words. So I I don't know if that's intentional of the translator's side, because I mean in the Greek the Greek New Testament that we do have, those words are not similar. So I mean it's it's something that a time that Matt might have done in Hebrew or in Aramaic in the original that sort of got lost in the translation degree, if the original was Aramaic. I mean there are some sources that say it was. I guess it's possible, but I'm I'm I'm not entirely convinced. It's it could be. It's uh it's definitely a possibility.

SPEAKER_01

So the idea that what John in the original language here was doing was that he was delivering this crushing twist of a phrase that would substitute out sons and substitute in stones. It might be a little bit of a stretch from non-native Hebrew speakers who are sitting in a seminary in North America and kind of maybe drawing some connections that you think could be there but maybe aren't. Am I hearing you're right? Matthew 3, right? Let's put it in my U verse in Hebrew.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And just read it in the in the Hebrew if that's okay.

unknown

I'll guess B if it sounds like how how close it sounds in the Hebrew.

SPEAKER_01

Now the the the translation we have is of course to modern Hebrew, but it's uh in which word? This would be verses nine and well, just verse nine.

unknown

Verse nine.

SPEAKER_00

You typically have those words right after one another. Yeah. Very close to each other. They're very, I mean, when you look at the written, it's just like one letter different. I mean, they sound a bit different because it's V there and B there, but when you look at the written in Hebrew, it's just one letter different, so they're almost exactly the same.

SPEAKER_01

So it wasn't immediately obvious to you, but it's the kind of thing that if it was there, maybe the original audience would have seen it and maybe we're just having I think so.

unknown

I think so.

SPEAKER_00

Especially, I mean, yeah, I know yes, you you you look at John the Baptist as this wild guy out in the desert and everything, but I mean he knew his old testament, he knew that his Hebrew. I mean, we have this common section in the same area, the Dead Sea Scope and all that. I mean, uh they they they knew their stuff when it comes to his Hebrew, so definitely. I definitely think that there's a bit something here. But when I look at it now in the Hebrew, I'm just gonna really quickly uh old the translation, the Delic translation, made in the 1870s into biblical Hebrew, more telemetic Hebrew, actually. I don't think it's my chance. I mean I think it's translated. He was a giant Hebrew scholar in Germany in the 1870s, and he translated the entire Bible to uh not biblical Hebrew, but to the Hebrew that might have been spoken at the time of Jesus, actually. So sort of using all kinds of words and phrases from the Talmud to to get to some sort of second temple time of the Hebrew.

SPEAKER_01

And so if he translated it that way, since translation is interpretation, he probably thought there was something to it.

unknown

I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. That's fascinating. Hey, while I've got you on the line, can I ask you one more question?

unknown

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

You had some thoughts on the prophecy passage at the end of Matthew chapter two about, again, another potential Hebrew pun, the theory that when when Matthew says, so was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, he will be called a Nazarene. You had some thoughts on the validity of that theory about the the the word for shoot.

unknown

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Because I think I I don't think I don't really think that is a pun. I think it's more um uh it's not even a play on the words, because um it's it's not just that the words sound alike, it's it's actually the same word. Because the Hebrew Neksel or N or Nikal means a branch or not to shoot, but it it also means to keep or to guard. Um you have a cut of uh tree and you have some branches coming out. So anything that's guarding or any kind of things like that. Um guarding power where you're guarding. I think that's places in the Bible where where the messiah is called the messenger. That it's called the guardian city, the messenger. Probably not. Yeah and coming from the city that is named of the exact same word that is used for to to describe the messiah, thinking that he's just looking at this and he's saying, Oh, this cannot be a coincidence. This has to be this has to be some sort of divine reason for this to happen.

SPEAKER_01

As a native Hebrew speaker and somebody who studies Hebrew professionally, what percentage sure are you in your mind that that is what Matthew meant here?

SPEAKER_00

Can you remind me what the other theory was?

SPEAKER_01

One that it was a pun, and the other one that it's just a culmination of a whole bunch of prophecies that all talk about the humility and modesty and low state of the Messiah.

unknown

I definitely think that it's uh no.

SPEAKER_00

So I would say at least 90% sure because it's it's not even a pun. You know, two words that just have sound alike or similar. But this is not a pun like that. This is like the same word, it's the exact same word that is being used. The same word that is used to describe the Messiah is also used to describe the city in which he's growing up. This is a fulfillment of a prophecy. Now he may be expressed that a bit clumsily so that it would be hard for non-Hebre speakers to read it, but I don't think he originally thought that 2,000 years later people from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean will be reading it.

SPEAKER_01

Isn't that one of the tricky things about trying to make sense of Matthew and the New Testament and a 2,000-year-old document in general? Yeah, and I can handle my business a little bit, uh at least a little bit on the history side and the philosophy side and and that kind of stuff, but uh my Hebrew is garbage. Well, thank you. You're very generous. So, hey, could we do this again sometime? If I run into stuff that is just beyond that has me out of my depth on the language, can I just call you up and and ask you?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, definitely, sure. No problem. I'll be happy to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this has been a huge help. I need to go mentally process this a little bit. And we kind of got onto two things here, but I'm glad we covered them both while we had you on the line. Hey, I really do appreciate it, man.

unknown

No problem.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, that was wildly instructive. Let me see if I can do my best quickly to summarize what I gleaned from that. Okay, one, although Tuviero wasn't familiar with this or convinced of it initially, when he looked closely at Matthew 3 9, he could detect that there was something going on here between the words stones and children. And if he's reading that right, and there's a lot better chance he's reading that right than I'm reading it right, that would mean that it looks like John is trying to say, look, this whole ethnic religious claim that you have to Abraham as your father is kind of dime a dozen, because God could just as easily whip up some rocks to accomplish the same thing. It's a jab, it's a twist, and it's an acknowledgement of, frankly, the power of God and the not really that important status of these people who imagine themselves to be irreplaceable and very, very important. Interpretation is mine, not necessarily Tuvia's. And the second thing is that Tuvia was very convinced of the linguistic explanation for the controversy surrounding the prophecy at the end of Matthew chapter two. And we didn't get into it a whole bunch when I was talking with him, but you might remember this from earlier conversations. You get the whole birth and infancy narrative in Matthew chapters one and two, and Matthew is citing all of this Old Testament stuff and constantly using language like then what was said through the prophet so-and-so was fulfilled. And then here's the verse, and it's you know, smoking gun, lock and key, prophecy from Old Testament, Jesus' fulfillment here, aha, you can see it. Except for the last one, where it talks about Jesus going to live in this town called Nazareth, and then he says, so was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, he will be called a Nazarene. That's verse 23 of chapter two. And I told you before that we don't really know what to do with this, and that I've heard a handful of theories about what to do with this, and I kind of poo-pooed the one about, you know, this being some kind of connection between the prophecy surrounding the family tree of David, the shoot coming off of a dead stump, is the the metaphorical poetic language, the imagery that's used in the Old Testament. Some people are like, oh yeah, there's a connection there between that shoot word and Nazarene. I was like, I don't really see it. But guess what? Maybe I'm a giant idiot, and there is actually something to it. So that tells you how seriously to take me. Tuvia put that at like 90% certainty that that is what the author was going for, and that is how the original audience would have understood it. Does that settle it? No, but it's pretty fascinating to get an insider expert take on that kind of language. We have gone on forever. I really am very committed to this whole 10-minute thing. So I don't know, I might make it up to you tomorrow. We'll see what we get into. I want to say thanks to Tuvia Pollock for lending his expertise to the conversation. If you want to know more about who he is and what he thinks and what he writes about, check out 2vapollock.wordpress.com or just check out the link below. Obviously, I also want to say thanks again to Dwell Audio Bible app for sponsoring this week of the podcast and for offering TMBH podcast listeners a really good deal on their product. And finally, I just want to say thanks again to you. I know some of this is really deep water stuff. I try to kind of mix up the depth and pace of this thing to keep it interesting and fresh and fun, but you're up for the conversation, and I hugely respect you for it. Thanks for being here. Can't wait to pick it up tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.