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Isaiah 63:9: “In all their affliction he was afflicted…”

 

Here is something I have never understood about the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or the Kittle which is the standard Masoric text used by our Western Christian translators.   For you Hebrew students, check out the word lo in this passage in your Hebrew Bible.  You will notice a (.) above the word.  In your Kittle or Stutgartensia you will see an (o) above the word.  What that little mark means, which even translators tend to ignore is that this is not what is found in the original text, it is just Oral Tradition.

 

To those of us who believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, that little mark is very important.  Jesus warned in Matthew 5:18; “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

 

What I was taught in seminary about the jot and tittle, was scary in a way.   The standard teaching was that the tittle was the tagin found in the Sefer Torah and the Magilan Esther (hand written portions of the Bible). You also find it on the terrillin and mezuzahs.  This made little sense to me, as the tagin each have special meanings which are not inspired, so why would Jesus condemn the changing of something that was not inspired?  Not liking this explanation, I went with the secondary explanation that the tittle was  like the foot on the taw and if you  eliminate that, you have a chet. I have to admit that at this point, I believe I was wrong.

 

A Hebrew scholar who was an ultra orthodox rabbi, pointed out that in the Greek the word that has been translated as tittle is keraia.  The word tittle comes from the Latin which was first used in the 11th Century to distinguish the letter i from strokes of nearby letters.  Although originally a larger mark, it was reduced to a dot when Roman-style typefaces were introduced. It is called a diacritic.  Hence the word tittle means the dot above the lower case i or j.  In Greek the word keraia means a hook or serif and was most likely referring to a Greek diacritic.  Iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet and was used as a small diacritic called a hypogegrammeni.   The Iota is like the Yod in the Hebrew as the smallest letter of the alphabet, but where do we find the keraia (tittle) or the diacritic in the Hebrew.  Well we have one in Isaiah 63:9 over the word lo and Jesus is telling us go with the original manuscript and not what Oral Tradition tells us.

 

Hence your Kittle or Stuttgartensia will not give you the original word, it only gives what oral tradition dictates with a little tittle above it to alert you to the fact that there is another word used here and I could only find that word in the Sefer Torah or other Jewish copies of the original Hebrew.

 

You see the word lo in this verse is written differently than it is read. It is originally written as lu. The original uses a Vav and not an Aleph.  Lo means no or there is not.  Lu means he.  Both readings were meant to be combined so it could be translated correctly.  Because our English versions overlook this tittle our rending of this passage in Isaiah 63:9 is In all their affliction He was afflicted. That is comforting, but there is more to it. If we pay close attention to this tittle and as a good Christians we should, we can see that this passage as clearly speaking of Jesus, the proper rendering would be: In all their afflictions, He is afflicted, THEN THERE IS NO AFFLICTION.   The rabbi, who sees the he as God and not Jesus that pointed out this little oversight that we Christians tend to make, added:  “When one knows how to praise God in this way, the suffering will disappear by itself.”  In other words when a person realizes that God is present in all his afflictions, then the afflictions themselves cease to exist.”

 

The basic meaning is still there, when we are afflicted Jesus suffers that same affliction with us.  The word affliction in Hebrew is sarar which comes from a Semitic root SR and was used by travelers who wore sandals while traveling.  There would be the constant threat of little stones making their way into the sandals and rubbing against the foot.  This would happen so often you just could not waste time removing the sandal to get rid of the stone so you put up this irritation, SR or affliction as long as you could.  It was just a small irritation (SR), but one that would soon cause a major problem.

 

The point of using the word sarar is that Jesus suffers with us not only in our major sufferings but he even feels the daily irritations that we must endure.  He loves us so much that He wants to share our smallest problems and irritations.  That driver who cuts us off or that boss that yells at us, Jesus shares our irritation and our wounded spirit. He wants us to talk about it with Him as he feels our same pain. Then when we do talk about it with Him, well, then there is no affliction.   If we don’t talk about these little things with Him then that little stone in our sandal will soon develop a blister on our foot until we are unable to walk.

 

In everything give Him thanks and praise for loving us enough to even share in our sarar, SK, our petty little sorrows and irritations. Just crawl up into his celestrial lap and let him wrap you in His arms as you tell him how that mean old driver cut you off or nasty little boss yelled at you.  Then He will say, “It’s alright.”  And you know what?  It will be alright.

 

 

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