Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Matthew 19:16-17: “And behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? And He said unto him, why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God.” KJV
Whoa, whoa, wait just one minute, is Jesus suggesting here that He is not divine, that He is not God Himself?   It appears from this English translation that Jesus is declaring that He is not equal with God.   Thank goodness for our modern translations which render this as: “Why are you asking me what is good” rather than “why callest thou me good?”  This is a very good example of how we are privy to documents or manuscripts that were not available to the translators of the King James Bible 400 years ago.   We now have earlier manuscripts and writings by church fathers unknown to the translators of the King James Version that shed more light on this passage.  It is now accepted by Greek scholars that the earliest manuscripts read: “Why do you question me (Greek – erotas: ask, question) on what is good.”
Whew, that had me a little worried for the years I was raised on the KJV.  I’m not knocking the KJV, just saying that the Oxford scholars did the best they could with what they had available to them at that time.
Now I can concentrate on this matter of “good.”  There are two key words in the Greek for “good.”   One is “kalos” which means beautiful, worthy, morally, excellent, righteous and valuable.  The other, which is the word used in this passage is “agathos” which means good.   Agathos is one of those words you can spend an hour looking it up in various lexicons and all you will get for a definition is – good.  What the duce is “good?” Webster defines good as morally excellent, virtuous, and righteous.  That’s no help, because that define Kalos which is not the word used here.  Agathos must mean something a little different.
This old boy is asking what “good” thing he must do to get eternal life, Jesus tells him to keep the commandments.  Well, another problem, are we not taught that Jesus fulfilled the law, that we are now under grace and heaven comes through no merit of our own?  Then why does Jesus seemingly contradict Himself and say we can earn eternal life by keeping the law?
Ok, if you are as exhausted as I am in trying to decipher this in the Greek, then let’s follow the lead of the Eastern Church and check the Syriac or Aramaic Bible.  The Eastern Church alleges that the original language of the Book of Matthew was written in Aramaic and later translated into Greek.    So, let’s go for it.
There are actually four words in the Syriac (Aramaic) language for “good.”  There is “sapar” which is the direct equivalent to the Greek word “kalos” and means to be worthy, beautiful, valuable.   There is also the word “taqan” which is also equivalent to the Greek word “kalos” and our English word for “good” and means morally excellent, virtuous, and righteous.   Then there is the word “hana” which means pleasurable and erotic.   I do not want to speculate on the equivalent word in the English or Greek for that one.  This now leaves us with just one word which is the word used in the Aramaic Bible and that is “tava’” The scribes who translated this into the Greek felt that agathos was the best Greek word to use for this which is probably why it is so difficult to find an English definition of this word, as agathos is not really a perfect match.
Tava’ is identical to the Hebrew word “tov” which means to be in harmony with God. In the Aramaic text the verse is literally translated as: “what good is good that I should do to obtain eternal life?”  Using the Aramaic word “tava’” we find that this man is asking:  “what is in harmony with God so that I may be in harmony with God?”  Then he really blows it by adding: “that I may obtain eternal life.”  I mean you can’t be in harmony with God if you have mercenary motives. Complete harmony with God means your motives and God’s motives are one and the same. If you are in complete harmony with God, you will have eternal life as that is God’s desire.   You will not “obtain” (Greek: scho – to grab hold of, obtain) eternal life, you automatically get it.  The Aramaic word is “dalah” which has the same meaning as the Greek.
In this case Jesus answered only as He could by saying that if you are in perfect harmony with God you will be following the laws.  The old boy still didn’t get it as he said, like so many of us; I have tried to follow the laws since I was a child.  So Jesus tried to explain it further by saying, “No, you lack one thing, your desires for riches are not in harmony with God.  Sell it all and follow me.”  The word “follow” in the Aramaic is “batar” which means to cut into pieces or separate yourself. It also has the idea of being surrounded.  In other words, Jesus was not saying that this man had to follow Jesus around, but he had to separate himself from everything that kept him from being completely surrounded by Jesus.  In this case, it was his dependency upon his riches and not God that kept him out of harmony with God.  The Talmud teaches that it is difficult for a rich man to know God because a poor man must depend upon God for his daily bread, but a rich man has less dependency upon God because his riches are his back up, his fail safe.   One who is poor and depends upon God for his daily bread must continually surround himself with God, seeks to be in His presence and be in harmony with Him.  But when you have a month’s supply in the pantry, you tend to not pray as much.
I met a man yesterday in a home church who was homeless, living on the streets.  He was ok with this as he was leading people to the Lord and indeed brought a couple homeless people to the home church with him.  He said the room was in the “Key of E.”  He could play the piano in the key that would match the mood of the Spirit of God that was present in that room.  He was in tune (tawa’) with God.  I believe when Jesus told the rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, he had someone like this street preacher in mind as the recipient.   For in giving to this street preacher he would see what it was like to be “tawa’” or in harmony with God.  I found the personal truth to that as this old boy is having dinner on the ten bucks I was going to use to purchase some frivolous possession (a DVD) that would not in tune with God.  You know what, after parting with the hope of watching that Hollywood movie, I began to feel the “key of E.”

Subscribe to our free Daily Hebrew Word Study for in-depth commentary using Biblical Hebrew!

* indicates required