Discussion about The Man Born Blind and Jesus’ Words – John 9

1. H. (Australia) writes :

It appears to me that the correct understand­ing of this episode can be found in 2 Tim. 2: 15 and Matt. 9 : 6.

We know that the original Greek manuscripts were lacking in punctuation, and that errors could occur if words and phrases were incorrectly divided. Hence Paul’s remark to Timothy about “a workman rightly dividing the word of truth” could sometimes have a very literal application.

Now let us look at Matt. 9. The sequence is :-

1. Jesus sees a sick man.
2. Jesus says to him, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.”
3. Jesus, reading the thoughts of the scribes, asks them which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee” or “Arise and walk” ?
4. Jesus says, “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power to forgive sins—arise, take up thy bed.”

Perhaps Jno. 9 is incorrectly punctuated, and there should be a full-stop and a pause in the middle of verse 3 after the word “parents.” The sequence then becomes :-

1. Jesus sees a blind man.
2. The disciples ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents . .
3. Jesus answers, “Neither of them.”
4. Perhaps after a brief pause to draw attention to what he was about to do, Jesus then expresses much the same thought as in “4” above ; “But that the works of God should be made manifest in him (and here we put a comma instead of the full-stop of the A. V.) I must work the works of Him that sent me.” We should also bear in mind that Jesus and the disciples would not be speaking in Greek, but in Aramaic, and that, in the process of translation from Aramaic into Greek, and then from Greek into the sort of English used 300 years ago, the narrative may have lost a little in clarity.

Reply.

Our correspondent’s suggestion, if adopted, would remove the difficulty hinted at by us in the August Testimony.

The difficulty only arises from what we our­selves think is a crude (literal) understanding of Jno. 9 : 3. We regard this verse as being exactly parallel to Jno. 19 : 24, which reads : “They (the soldiers) said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be : that the Scripture might be fulfilled. . .”

We cannot think that these Roman soldiers were in any way whatever concerned to fulfil a Hebrew prophecy, yet the verse might be read as meaning that they cast lots for the coat of Jesus in order to fulfil Scripture ! They had no such intention, of course, but quite un­wittingly they did precisely what had been predicted hundreds of years earlier.

In much the same way Jno. 9 : 3 ought to be understood as meaning that the man’s blindness provided the occasion for the display of the power of God.

“Born of the Spirit”

1. V. M. (New Zealand) writes :

Re your comment in the June Testimony, I wish to state how lamentably weak you are when you differentiate between the father and the mother.

If you read Ps. 51: 5 you will find that David did not have any false ideas about motherhood. Eve had the curse put on her and on all her daughters. “And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gen. 3: 16).

Over 50 times it is stated that Christ is the Son of man (not woman), but you deny your Master, and cherish tradition . . . Your Master was not crucified but nailed on a stake, as indicated in the original Greek (see Companion Bible).

Reply.

We have looked again at the June Testimony, but cannot find there any trace of ‘differenti­ation between the father and the mother.” The only differentiation we alluded to is the difference between “flesh” and “spirit.”

Again, we do not know what “tradition” we are supposed to “cherish.” We fully admit that Jesus is frequently styled in Scripture “the Son of man,” so why our correspondent should say “You deny your Master” we have no idea.

As for his statement that Jesus “was not crucified, but nailed to a stake,” we—in our simplicity—assumed that the two phrases expressed the same idea. But “crucified” is a Bible word for the “nailing on a stake,” and “crucify” (or “crucified”) appears in Scripture more than 30 times to describe the manner of our Lord’s execution.

“The Ethiopian Woman”

1. H. M. (Ashton-under-Lyne) sends us the story related by Josephus that Moses, during his 40 years residence in Egypt, had married Tharbis, an Ethiopian princess. We have already published this story, so there is no point in repeating it.
2. H. M. adds : It has been suggested in a contemporary magazine that the Ethiopian woman whom Moses married was probably one of the “mixed multitude” which went out of Egypt with the Israelites. There is, however, no support for such an idea. I can hardly imagine a man of Moses’ calibre doing this.

The Bible tells us that Moses had married an Ethiopian woman, and the testimony of Josephus that this woman was an Ethiopian princess seems much more likely. It is possible, of course, that Tharbis was alive when Aaron and Miriam spoke against Moses because of her. On the other hand, she may have been dead, and they were taunting him with doing something which the Law, given later at Sinai, condemned as wrong.

To contend that Zipporah was the “Ethiopian woman” seems rather foolish. The marginal rendering gives “Cushite,” and the Cushites seem to have descended from Ham (see Gen. 10 : 6), whilst the Midianites were descended from Abraham by his wife Keturah (see Gen. 25 : 4).

There seems to be no record of the death of Zipporah, and one cannot be certain that she and Tharbis were alive at the same time. What seems fairly plain, however, is that Moses had two wives, the princess Tharbis, whom he married first, and later Zipporah.

Reply.

We have previously given reasons why we do not accept the story told by Josephus, and why we disbelieve his account of the alleged treachery of Tharbis, and of her consequent marriage to Moses.

We repeat our view that the marriage to the Ethiopian woman was subsequent to the marriage with Zipporah, but we do not profess to be able to identify the second wife.

The suggestion that she may have been one of the “mixed multitude” is merely a guess, and is not worthy of discussion.

“He maketh the barren woman to be a joyful mother of children”

(Ps. 113 : 9)

. F. C. (Shipley) writes :

It is a matter of very deep regret that a very active believer should abandon the Christian faith on so great a misunderstanding of Ps. 113 : 9 as that given in “Notes on the Daily Readings” in the September Testimony.

Paul demonstrates how such expressions are to be interpreted. Gal. 4 : 27, “Rejoice thou barren that bearest not . .”, where the barren woman is the Church of Christ, and the sense of Ps. 113 : 9 is couched in like sentiments.

In identical thought sequence, the Spirit expresses itself on many other occasions, notably in Prov. 31: 10, commencing “Who can find a virtuous woman ? . . . She is like the merchant ships, and bringeth her food from afar.” Surely no woman reading the words of this Proverb would feel impelled to “rise while it is yet night” to give “meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens” ! Nor yet can we credit that any woman would be discouraged if she could not make “coverings of tapestry,” or possess clothing of “silk and purple.”

But the ecclesias would be deficient if they did not all these things, for the language of Prov. 31 : 10 does no more than depict the attributes of the true Church. We may be sure that Ps. 113 : 9 does the same.

Reply.

This rather novel interpretation has the merit that it removes the disappointment which might arise from a literal understanding of Ps. 113 : 9, but we are not convinced that a purely spiritual interpretation was intended by the Psalmist or by the writer of Prov. 31.

The context in each case seems to us to call for a literal interpretation, but we are not thereby implying that a spiritual interpretation is ruled out. The “virtuous woman” of Prov. 31 : 10 had a husband who sat with others in the gate of his city (see verse 23) ; she had children who admired her (verse 28).

In Ps. 113 the writer extols God, and points out some of His bountiful acts.

“He raiseth up the poor out of the dust. . “.

We must under-. stand by this that God raises up some of the poor. God does not abolish all poverty, for Jesus said, “The poor ye have always with you,” and it was a beggar whom Peter cured of his lameness (see Acts 3 : 6).

So, too, we must understand that sometimes, but not always, God enables a barren woman to have children. We think of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and others, but when God did not intervene, some women remained barren.

But we agree unreservedly with our correspondent that it is a matter of very great regret when the husband of a barren woman to whom God has not vouchsafed motherhood should abandon all his religious professions on the alleged ground that “God has not kept His word.” There is no promise in Scripture that all barren women will be healed.

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?”

F.W. G. (Dudley) writes :

I am very sorry that I surprised W. S. T. with my comments on this subject, but I am afraid that I must surprise him once again when I inform him that the views he holds are exactly the same as I held myself until, upon closer study, I found them to be unscriptural and illogical.

The whole argument of W. S. T. hinges upon the translation of “Eloi, Eloi,” and if it is proved that it does NOT mean “My Strength, My Strength,” his argument falls to pieces ; and the Editor quite rightly points out that the weight of evidence is against W. S. T. But let us assume that all commentators are wrong, and only W. S. T. is right, what then ? It leaves us two alternatives :—

1. That “My Strength, My Strength” refers to God Himself, in which case why change the words ? And even if you do, it still means that God had forsaken Jesus, which W. T. says did not happen.
2. That “My Strength, My Strength” means, as W. T. says, the Holy Spirit ; in which case we are standing on very dangerous ground—”Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, why hast thou forsaken me ?” It implies that Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit as a Person (I know that the Holy Spirit is personified in Scripture), but I cannot imagine Jesus address­ing it as a Person. But let us go so far as to suppose that he did, we next ask : Why did Jesus want the Holy Spirit, when he had already spurned the help of twelve legions of angels ? If, again, the Holy Spirit was his Strength, why ask such a foolish question as to WHY it had forsaken him, when he knew he was to expire ?

Then again we come to another point made by W. S. T. He says that when the Holy Spirit left Jesus, it left him with “an empty feeling which cannot be described.” I see no evidence in Scripture to support this view, but I suggest that, if it be true, the Holy Spirit left him in Gethsemane, for the Scripture plainly declares that while there Jesus “being in an agony, sweat as it were great drops of blood.” But, in humility, I suggest that the mistake W. S. T. is making here is due to an imperfect understanding of Holy Spirit, its nature, its possession and its function.

Next W. S. T. says “that Jesus had a body weakened to extremity by his labours,” which is very illogical. I have never heard of a young man’s body (Jesus was about 33) becoming weaker with hard labour (ask a weight lifter !).

Then W. S. T. says that the cry of Jesus was “the cry of a man whose strength was sapped to its extreme.” W. S. T. has obviously never

seen anyone in such an unfortunate position, or he would know that anyone in such a condition would not even have the energy to speak, and yet the record says that Jesus “cried with a LOUD voice and gave up the spirit.”

We come now to a point raised by the Editor in his “Reply” to my first article. I suggested that God was in the darkness, and that Jesus knew it, hence his cry when the darkness lifted at the ninth hour. It was pointed out that “God dwells in light,” which is correct, and we may add that “He dwells in light which no MAN can approach unto.”

Therefore if a man desired to have communion with God, he must be covered, or he would die, and the Man Christ Jesus was no different. This explains why Moses, so that he could receive the commandments, “drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” The Editor points out the fact that the High Priest went into the Most Holy Place into the Shekinah Glory, but the High Priest had to be enveloped in a cloud or incense, that he die not ; he, too, had to be covered.

Lastly, I ask : Is it unreasonable to suppose that if God saw fit to send an angel to strengthen Jesus in Gethsemane (when there were only the dread thoughts of crucifixion), is it therefore not quite reasonable to suppose that God would Himself come to His well-beloved Son when be was suffering, and when he needed God most of all ?