Okay, this post is going to be incredibly weird for a moment. I’m warning you up front. Oh please, please, please—don’t skim this and do read all the way to the end…I’m risking a moment of sounding like a total weirdo because I believe it’s going to teach you an important principle in biblical interpretation.
Okay. Let’s just get the weird sentence out of the way first.
Did you know that Proverbs 12:10 teaches us that if you’re righteous you’ll have sexual relations with your animal?
Let me show you why I say that.
Proverbs 12:10 says this: “Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” The word that is translated “regard” is the Hebrew word יָדַע yāḏaʿ. It means “to know”. Do you know where else we see that word in the Bible?
“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain…” (Genesis 4:1)
“Cain knew his wife…” (Genesis 4:17)
The same word is used in Proverbs 12:10 that is used in Genesis 4 as a euphemism for having sexual relations between a man and a woman. SAME WORD!!!!
*I’m giving you that really long charismatic preacher pause as if the Lord has just revealed some mighty insight to me…something that took years of deep study in the original languages to find…*
Of course, this is not only disgusting it’s also an example of poor biblical interpretation. Just because a word means something somewhere doesn’t mean it carries that same meaning elsewhere. The nerdy term for this is illegitimate totality transfer. I think it was first coined by James Barr, in his landmark work Semantics of Biblical Language. Illegitimate totality transfer assumes that all the uses that occur at a given time apply in any given instance.
I share this rather ridiculous example because sometimes being absolutely foolish like this can help us see the danger of something. And this is especially a danger when we’ve got access to a resource like Blue Letter Bible or a Hebrew/Greek lexicon and maybe a Strong’s resource to boot. The overzealous student finds a word in the original and does a “word study” on that word. What that means it that you find all the uses of that word and then you shove each of those passages and all of their meaning into the Scripture you’re studying.
You likely understand this concept in English. Take something as simple as the word love. If someone tells me they love pickles, I’m probably not going to be waiting for an invitation to a wedding. (Unless of course Pickles happens to be the name of his new girlfriend). I know not to load every possible meaning of “love” into their propensity for pickle consumption.
Greek and Hebrew works the same way. Many words have a broad semantic range. So, when it says Adam yada’d his wife Eve and we’re also told to yada Fido, they clearly mean two different things. That’s why it is helpful translated something like “regard”. Because the word has a broad range of meaning.
We determine that meaning based on context. And frankly, common sense. If you’re translation of a passage has you pondering bestiality, you should definitely go back to the drawing board.
I share this silly, and really rather horrible, example of biblical interpretation gone wrong to warn you against doing “word studies” without caution. I’ll close with this warning from Ryan Martin:
Resist the urge to treat words—even key words like faith or justification—as if they were variables in a math equation. Think of words in terms of their function and usage, and don’t pull a word out of its context in order to determine its meaning. Conversely, reflect on how that word is being used within its context. (source)
If you want to see Word Studies done well, consider these from The Bible Project.
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That picture is the popular meme of crazy conspiracy theory map guy. It fits. That’s often what happens with some of these word studies. And oddly enough the same thinking tends to lend itself to conspiracy theories too.
I’ve started a new project called Proverbs4Today. They are daily devotionals from the Proverbs. If you find this article helpful, you might consider checking out our newest project: Proverbs4Today.
