Proverbs 30:28:  “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings ‘palaces.” KJV

Yesterday I pressed the button on my dash board to open the doors of my disability bus to let off one of my passengers on 26^th Street on the border of Berwyn and Cicero.  This is in the heart of the Metro Chicago area, pure city.  The only wildlife you see are a few squirrels and some birds nothing more. There have been occasional sightings of coyotes, but they are pretty elusive.

Yet, when I opened the doors standing on the sidewalk in front of the opening doors stood a dragon as if he were waiting to board my bus. I am not kidding, a dragon.  Ok, I am romanticizing, it was a big lizard.  No not the Jurassic Park size lizards, just your ordinary green, scaly, creature with horns and warts, about a foot and half long.  I mean driving a bus through Chicago I have come to expect most anything when I open the doors to my bus, but a lizard?   That I never expected to see.  You know how your mind works, my first thought was that the Wicked Witch of East Cicero put a curse on one of our drivers and turned him into a lizard and he was trying to get a ride back to the terminal. Of course I dismissed that idea completely. It would have had to be a toad not a lizard.

He appeared to be quite polite, as if he were waiting for my passenger to disembark before he stepped onto my bus. My passenger was not charmed by his manners.  She just let out a blood curdling scream –“EEEEEK it’s a monster.” Poor little guy, scared him to death.  He quickly scurried under a bush.  I had to personally walk the little old lady to the door of her apartment assuring her I was ready to slay that dragon if he should attack, which was very unlikely as this lizard is about as out of place in the big city of Chicago as a, well as a lizard in the big city of Chicago.  I actually thought he was cute in a lizardly sort of  way.   It was just as well he scurried away; I probably could not have given him a ride anyways. You had to be a resident of Cicero to ride the bus and you had to either be a senior citizen or disabled.  The only disability I could detect on my little friend was being green which was not enough of a disability to qualify for a ride.  He certainly did not appear to be a senior and I seriously question he was a resident of Cicero.  I think we have some sort of ordinance forbidding lizards as pets. I took a poll of the other drivers and no one, no matter how many years they have worked for the town could recall ever seeing a lizard, let alone one waiting for a ride on their bus.

I had really been seeking an answer in Scripture to a personal issue so I began to assume that maybe this was yiredu. I mean if a lizard shows up at your door in the middle of the City of Chicago, perhaps he came to share a message.

So I began to search the Scriptures on lizards and behold, I found the answer to the issue I have been struggling with for many months now.  Actually, I have been struggle with this since the release of my book and manual, Beyond the Lexicon. You see I have been suffering from something called an inferiority complex.

I mean I do have degrees from good schools like Moody Bible Institute and Denver Seminary, all accredited by North Central but it is not like I have degrees from Princeton, Harvard or Oxford.  I have never been published in an academic journal and yet I am proposing in my books to introduce to evangelical Christianity a means of studying the Word of God in the original Hebrew using Hebrew letters, something that is not part of the main stream.  I mean like who am I against big Ivy League geniuses.  Sort of like, “Buddy, you don’t have an inferiority complex, you are just inferior.

I think that is what this passage in Proverbs is addressing.  Actually, two things.  One is that the spider is taketh hold with his hands.   One Jewish rabbi renders the word yadaim not as hand but as handiwork. Only a privileged few are allowed to enter a king’s palace, let alone perform his handiwork, but an insignificant creature like a spider manages to wander into palace and even demonstrates his handiwork in the throne room.  I sensed God telling me to just be that spider and spin my personal handiwork.  He will let my work be seen in a throne room if He wants.

There is one other thing about this passage.  The word in Hebrew for spider is ‘akabyish and the word for lizard is leta’ah.  Yet the word used in Proverbs is semamyth.  I read this in twenty different modern English translations and twelve render this as lizard while eight render it as spider.  Now there is an awful lot of difference between a spider and a lizard.

My point is this, we evangelical Christians are just so trusting of our handful of scholars who translate the Bible for us, and we just accept what they say without question.  Then we are confounded when we see such a variance in renderings.  I mean a spider and lizard?  They have no idea what semamyth really means, they are just giving it their best guess.  How many other English words in the Bible are merely man’s best guess or what tradition has dictated. Worse what a particularly denomination or school of thought has dictated a word should mean?  There are more such words than we care to imagine.  That is why the Jews teach their children from the age of four to read Hebrew so they can read the Scriptures themselves and not depend upon some expert who may have a biased opinion or even an agenda.

I believe with all the resources we have today online and readily available, there is no reason why anyone of us can be a spider or lizard and approach the throne room of the elite scholars with our own handiwork in interpretation guided by the Holy Spirit.

Maybe that old lizard didn’t make it on my bus because he was just so out of place, but dog gone it, you can’t blame him for trying and when the doors opened he was there.  If that lady hadn’t screamed and called him a monster he might just have got on my bus and would be munching on my carrot sticks right now in my apartment.  Too often we come up with some revelation given to us by the Holy Spirit and someone in authority who thinks they have some special knowledge lets out a scream and we take our little revelation and hide out in the bushes. After all, who are we to argue with the great minds of our denomination or church leaders? Ok maybe the little lizard did not have the proper credentials to ride my bus; he wasn’t a senior or disabled and probably not a resident of the town.  Just like many of us do not have the credentials to offer our little insight that the Holy Spirit has given us.  Not only are we not allowed to board the bus of revelation but someone screams and needs another leader to guide them and slay the dragon with that bit of insight that they think is beneath them. I mean they have the Holy Spirit to teach them, but then so does everyone else who has given their life to Jesus.

I say, Spiders and Lizards of the Christian world arise, it is our time to enter that elite throne room and share the insights that Holy Spirit has given us.