Template:Kidney-liver
Hebrew contains idioms that are semantically motivated by conceptual metaphor, metonymy, and symbolic acts representing ideas and concepts. Knowing these unique the meanings of these forms of expression are often essential in the process of understanding the meaning of the authors. While we can study to get a better understanding the key to understanding inspired scripture is to be inspired by the same spirit when we read the text.
As you examine just a few phrases in the Biblical text note also the alternate possibilities based on the variety of words available to choose from in the English for each Hebrew word.
How can we verify the truth even with an intense study of the available early codex and fragments if we translate Hebrew words into so many different English words?
Besides multiple variations in the translated words we may also observe variations in the original Hebrew words with letters added or deleted from what we see in the original transcript that often go unaccounted for in the translations to any given language.
The mathematical combination of possible translations becomes astronomical with these observed variations. Many words in the Hebrew language can have more than one distinctive meaning. The Hebrew language has also been in the hands of people with their own agendas who think like the Pharisees did at the time of Jesus the Christ for centuries.
- “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Attributed to Mark Twain
Kidney - reins and Liver - honor
Is the Leviticus instructions concerning blood sacrifice talking about livers or squeezing out kidney fat before burning up dead animals just to please God in heaven with the intoxicating aroma of burnt wool and hair or are the authors talking about something completely different?
If you change the definition of words you can change our understanding without changing the original text. Just shifting a definition of a word from sacrifice to kill can begin to alter the entire understanding of any text. To change our vision of the historical context will also change our interpretation. To fail to understand the metaphor and symbolism of a language common to the authors can take us away from understanding their original intent. The very idea that the same word for liver also means to honor, heavy, grievous, harden, glorious, sore, made heavy, chargeable, great many, and promote should raise concern, if not immediate alarm.
If the word translated kidney is also translated reins how do we know what is being said? The kidney is an organ while the word reins is defined:
“A means or an instrument by which power is exercised. Often used in the plural: the reins of government.”[1]
With our rudimentary knowledge of the language and any concordance we may begin to reexamine the words of the Bible. What you are about to see concerning the text may shatter the Humpty Dumpy mentality that words can mean what you choose them to mean. Or, you may disregard the possibility that you have been deceived and continue to believe a lie.
Alice thought the question is, “can you make words mean so many different things.” But Humpty knew that the “The question is: which is to be master - that's all.” In any case the truth shall set you free.
We should look at all things anew. Search to see and understand what God wants us to know. Are these altars with burning animals a conjuring trick to invoke the Holy Spirit and the power of God or were they a practical system of charity with a purpose and a plan which by its nature kept the people free souls under God?
If we stray from the precepts of God, His Way, will we become bound souls under the gods of authoritarian benefactors ruling through the institutions of men?
Will we become merchandise, human resources?
- “Thine eyes shall see the king... Thine heart shall meditate terror... where is the receiver? ... Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst perceive... that thou canst not understand. Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down...” Isaiah 33:17, 20.
- ↑ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Co.