A worthless person, a wicked man,
Walks with a perverse mouth;
He winks with his eyes,
He shuffles his feet,
He points with his fingers;
Perversity is in his heart,
He devises evil continually,
He sows discord.
Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly;
Suddenly he shall be broken without remedy.
Proverbs 6:12-15 (NKJV).
What are worthless and wicked people like?
They are constant liars,
signaling their deceit with a wink of the eye,
a nudge of the foot, or the wiggle of fingers.
Their perverted hearts plot evil,
and they constantly stir up trouble.
But they will be destroyed suddenly,
broken in an instant beyond all hope of healing.
Proverbs 6:12-15 (NLT).
A worthless person, a wicked man,
goes about with crooked speech,
winks with his eyes, scrapes with his feet,
points with his finger,
with perverted heart devises evil,
continually sowing discord;
therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly;
in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.
Proverbs 6:12-15 (RSV).
I've talked about the wicked and their destruction before, but this passage provides opportunity to discuss something important: translations and exegesis.
The Bible wasn't inspired in English. This is a controversial statement in that most people have an understanding of the Bible being inerrant which is not logically coherent. If you have ever asserted that a specific translation, let alone only that translation, is inerrant, you were wrong.
To start, the modern understanding of an "error" is considerably more exacting than the ancient, and many folks want to treat the Bible as if it were a textbook, a reference manual that someone sat down and wrote with the specific intent of communicating very specific messages in every passage. While this is true for some passages, like this one, it's not always clear exactly what the utility is in a section of scripture.
I enjoy the NKJV because it was translated in a word-for-word manner while attempting to reconcile the grandeur of the language in the KJV with the multitude of manuscripts that have been collected since the KJV was written. In a "word-for-word" type of translation, when an illustration, allegory, idiom, metaphor, or a cultural reference was used in the original text, instead of trying to account for those understandings in the process of translating, they're reproduced "as-is".
If you look at verse 13 in the original language, it most literally states "He winks with his eyes, he speaks with his feet, he teaches with his fingers." Look again at how each of the three translations I provided are communicating that same information, just in slightly different fashion. Even better, choose from some of the other translations you're familiar with (or not) and see how the entire passage is rendered differently in each while still trying to communicate the same truths.
The reason this is important to see and understand is because much ado is made of specific words and phrases in various English translations, and yet folks to not do due diligence and reference the entirety of the scriptures we have, placing their faith on the translators having done an accurate job and not having left out any important details.
If you've ever heard someone talk about a "bad" translation, exactly how would you imagine that is possible if the Bible is inerrant in every single manifestation of it? To help drive this point home, if you tear a page out of any Bible, does it magically return to that Bible to keep it intact? Could a Bible ever be printed with a typo in its pages? Is it possible to misquote the Bible?
In each circumstance, if we are to assert that, to be inerrant, every copy or manifestation of the Bible is perfect, the answer you are required to provide to those above questions is rather different than the one you're logically inclined to provide.
We can see that damaged Bibles can be missing pages, or are perhaps defaced, but God does not somehow correct them. We have some translations that are "better" than others, and some which are downright deceptive in the efforts of the translators to re-write scripture through the translation process to suit modern proclivities.
It's this illogical assertion regarding what it inerrant that has given people like Bart Ehrman any sort of platform at all, in that they push this concept to the logical extreme, and declare that Christianity cannot be true on the grounds that there have been typos or errors in the process of transcribing or translating scripture, even if those errors do not affect any actual truth being transmitted by the scripture. The rigidity of the understanding creates a barrier to belief which was not constructed by God, but by Satan, who regularly uses false dichotomies to disarm and disable those who truly seek God's will in their life.
Think about it. If Satan can tell you both that every manifestation of scripture needs to be perfect, right down to the last jot or tittle, and then in the next breath provide examples where any manifestation of scripture has an "error", can you see what the "logical" conclusion would then be?
Satan, by emphasizing an exaggerated understanding of what scripture is supposed to be, will create the very circumstances on which he can then discredit the truth of scripture without actually arguing about any of it in specific. If anything, Satan wants the belief in the idea of scripture being inerrant to be as strict as possible by human standards, so that just as we have all fallen short, so will any scripture, so why read and study it if it will not truly lead us to understanding truth?
This is why it is extremely ignorant to presume that Satan wants to undermine the authority of scripture merely by taking potshots, by discrediting specific doctrines or theologies within a framework of debate. Satan wants the whole Bible to both be casually dismissed as well as debated to a degree of pedantry that distracts from the necessary ecumenism within the Church.
Most recently, I was struck with the naive hypocrisy in a book I've been reading recently from a Father in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, that at the surface appeared like a logical claim, but upon further inspection was a demonstration of great stupidity.
The basic nature of the claim was that, if there wasn't a specific sect in the "Church" which was "The Church", that the different sects were relative to each other, then no similar argument could be made to distinguish between the other religions of the world that would then be relative to Christianity in exactly the same fashion.
This is the logical equivalent to saying that your physical body is no more distinct from anyone else's because your hand and your foot are different. That because your hand is not your entire body, that because your tongue is not your body, and so on and so forth, that because there is no one distilled element of the body which represents The Body, there is no "body" at all, is moronic.
Look at this passage about the wicked man, and how some translations are attempting to reproduce what he's literally doing as part of his wickedness, and some are trying to communicate what the meaning or significance of what he's literally doing, really is. Each is correct, though each is different, and if any were held up as the "perfect standard", the others would be considered "wrong" or "in error".
The "high standard" which you may be tempted to think comes from God may not at all, and Satan has no qualm feeding you all the lies and rationalizations you would desire to first foster an impossibly high ideal that Satan can then turn against you to undermine your witness and your faith.
Having a standard is not the problem. Scrutinizing translations is not the problem. The problem is when we add to what God really says, when, like Eve, we add to what God has really commanded, as if to demonstrate our own superiority. The problem is that we aren't ever nearly as clever as the master of lies, who has been learning and refining how he can trick and deceive humans for thousands and thousands of years, and yet we somehow think that we're the ones with the upper hand?
If pursuing God, in earnest and in humility, we would have the upper hand, but that also comes with genuine humility, not a blind arrogance being passed off as humility. When we start erecting edifices, physical or psychological, in the name of glorfying God, but instead only make much of ourselves, it is our actions, not just our words, our declared intent, that God will judge us by.
Read various translations. Go back to the original languages. Learn about what God truly thinks constitutes as "error", and refine the Gospel that you preach to adhere only to truth, empty of all vain puffery.
Avoid being as the wicked man, where the disparity between your actions and your words betray your true master, the one whom you truly worship and obey.
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