Psalms 27:2: “When the wicked, [even] mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.”
Boy does that sound creepy, you’re enemies and foes are going to eat up your flesh. God bless the King James Version because it sure needs it. It seems zombie movies and TV shows with dead people eating living people is about as popular as Westerns when I was a kid. Hence this is one time you do not want to use the KJV when teaching Junior High Sunday school. It will generate a response similar to the one I had when I was a sixteen year old camp counsel teaching the ten commandments to my junior age campers. Like the loyal KJV only kid that I was I quoted verbatim Exodus 20:17 and lost complete control of my campers during our lesson time and for the rest of the week my campers were talking about that part of your neighbor’s anatomy you were not covet.
It was later that week our camp director introduced me to the Phillips version of the Bible and I fell in love with paraphrases and modern translations and even when working as a graduate assistant to my professor who was on the executive committee for the translation work of the NIV I used whatever influence I had as a graduate assistant that they use the word donkey. I was assured that this was the committee’s decision for reasons similar to mine.
It looks like the translators of the NIV also peered into the future and saw the zombie craze because the NIV renders this as to devour me rather than eat my flesh. Actually the words in the Hebrew are le’ekol eth besart which literally means to devour my flesh. Only NIV stands alone to protect our Junior High Sunday School teachers from losing control of their classes as the students fill each other in on the latest episode of the Walking Dead. Hmmm, maybe I had some influence after all.
Is it really wrong to leave that word basar – flesh, out of the translation? Is the NIV a false translation for leaving the word out? I think we can all safely agree that the Psalmist was not talking about cannibals and zombies, that this is a poetic expression expressing just what the KJV gives us and that is that our enemies want to devour us. Cannibalism was not unheard of in ancient times. You have the story in II Kings 6:26-29 where during the siege of Jerusalem under the Assyrians the people were so starved that two women agreed to eat their kids. Jeremiah 19:9 “ And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.” Actually there are a number of passages which talk about eating the flesh.
If I say, “Let’s bury the hatchet” you are not going to get a little ax and we are not going out to your back yard to bury it. We automatically know it is an idiom meaning to make peace. However, someone new to the English language may actually expect some sort of ceremony where a hatchet is buried. Actually in the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy in the early 1700’s they did bury their weapons when making peace.
Obviously eating one’s flesh is an idiom. Food was very scarce in ancient times and the number one occupation in ancient times was to accumulate enough food so one’s family would survive. In fact the Hebrew word for war is milachamah. The word is actually the word lachem which is the word for bread with the preposition Mem (from) in front of it and ends with the suffix Qamates Hei or feminine ending. It literally means that (conflict stems) from bread for one’s family. If you stole bread or food from your neighbor and ate it yourself, you were said to be eating your neighbor’s flesh.
The phrase le’ekol eth besart – devours my flesh is an ancient Semitic idiom that literally means to steel something from you that is as precious to you as your life. That could be the wicked the ra’a’ who are so envious and jealous of you that the will do whatever it takes to suck the life out of you, they would love to have that which is bringing you such joy and satisfaction for themselves and would leave you with the feelings of despair and hopeless that they feel. They are literally devouring your flesh.
Your enemies or your tsar, that little pebble in your shoe, will rub and irritate you to the point where you feel totally helpless and hopeless. The tsar’s enemies will devour your flesh by a simply war of attrition until you can’t stand it anymore.
Then you have your foes or your ‘aveb, those who will attack and hate you for no other reason than the color of your skin, your nationality, your family background or something you have no control over or ability to change. These foes or ‘avebs will literally eat your flesh, take that life right out of you with their hate. They will keep you from enjoying any of the fruits and benefits of this life.
No these people will not literally eat you alive, but they will take all the life out of you and leave you with the feelings of hopelessness and despair. I like the way the NIV puts it, that they will devour you, in other words they take all your joy and peace hoping to have it for themselves.
My brother was a missionary to Papua New Guinea and he told how in years past many tribes practice cannibalism. They believe by consuming the flesh of their enemies they would be absorbing their courage and strength and thus they would rob that enemy’s courage and strength for their own. Of course that is ridiculous and it did not make them stronger or more courageous other than in their imagination. The same when someone is jealous of your joy ra’a, they will irritate you to death hoping to find some of your joy and peace for themselves tsar, and they will ‘aveb hate you for no reason at all but that they want what you have because they feel they are more deserving of it than you are ‘aveb. God will cause them to stumble and fall.
Tomorrow I will explain what happens when the stumble and fall.
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