Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He hath made everything beautiful in His time.” “I think I am beginning to understand it.” Pierre Augusta Renoir The great impressionist painter, Renoir, was fascinated with beauty and spent his life trying to understand what made something beautiful. To him the rose was the most beautiful flower and he
Matthew 2:23, “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” Isaiah 11:1 . And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his
Genesis 23:4 I [am] a stranger and a sojourner with you: In reading through Jewish literature I am finding that this statement of Abraham is really a loaded comment. Sarah, Abraham’s beloved wife has passed away and he wishes to bury her. It is a custom to bury a loved in land that you own,
Matthew 6:2: “Therefore when thou doest [thine] alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” I am an ordained Baptist minister and I fear I may get defrocked
Psalm 119:17 Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word. Deal bountifully is the Hebrew word ‘gamal’גמל and means to mature, ripened fruit, and a child weaned from its mother. Gamal has the idea of being nourished until completely ripe. Hebrew is a very colorful and picturesque language and in this verse I see a motif of “maturing in God”
Psalms 119:18: “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law.” The word used in this verse for law is Torah. During David’s time this was a reference to the first five books of the Bible which we call the Pentateuch. Today when the word Torah is used it may be
Psalms 118:10: “All nations compassed me about, but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.” The letter Beth can be used as a preposition for in, on or with. No English translation I know will render the Beth in this passage as with. However, the Jewish sages do that very thing.
Psalms 112:9-10: “He hath given freely to the poor; His mercies endures forever; His horn will be exalted in honor. The wicked will see it and be vexed; he will gnash his teeth and melt away; the desire of the wicked will perish.” There is an old rabbinic story of a son
Matthew 5:29, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell.” I remember hearing this verse read as a child and being very
