The Angry Birds of Proverbs Pt. 1

The wise man and woman control emotions. But are you an angry bird?

All endeavors and professions have a vocabulary. Do you know baseball lingo? Or are you familiar with the language of quilting? How about military jargon? If you work in the insurance, mortgage loan, accounting, engineering, IT or health industries, all have a standard vocabulary which grows with time.

To work in any industry, mentoring and training is required to master the vocabulary.

This is also the case with the Scriptures. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The New Testament was written in koine (common) Greek with some classical flair added by scholars such as Luke the Physician and the Apostle Paul.

The language is a collection of lexemes (the vocabulary) that form a collection indexed in a lexicon (a dictionary). Despite the fanciful terms, the concept is simple. If you plan to work with a blacksmith, one ought to master the blacksmith’s set of lexemes — particularly if the master blacksmith tries to warn you of the dangers of picking up work-in-progress while you are in the shop! “Best get the tongs to admire that piece!”

In the Old Testament, the language was (and still is) bound together with the culture of the time. The inspired authors of Scripture wrote God’s message, guided by the Spirit of God, without error in the words of the original language in a specific historical context.

The task of understanding the Scriptures involves grammatical, historical, and contextual exposition. Deriving the meaning - the task of translators - gave us the many Bible versions extant today (this does not include paraphrases).

Application is the work of the Bible student and the indwelling Spirit of God. The application does not negate or change the meaning. Instead, it carries God’s timeless truth from the authors of Scripture into our world to integrate that truth into our lives.

Solomon called this ability to integrate God’s truth “wisdom” or skill in living. The ability to grasp this knowledge and have insight into its life application comes from the fear of the Lord. It guides us in the way of the Lord (Proverbs 10:29).

The Angry Birds of Proverbs is a glimpse into the vocabulary of anger, strife-stirring, and peace-making. Click on this link for the PDF file [link].

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