FEB 18

1 Samuel 13:1
Memorise Proverbs 30:5-6
“…They had the highest regard for the Holy Scriptures and trusted in God’s sovereign preservation of His Word…”

1 Samuel 13:1 is a verse that is the subject of much debate. If you read your KJV bible, it says, “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel,” and then it proceeds on to verse 2 which describes how he chose men to form an army. You may think that this is a simple enough verse, meaning that in the first year of Saul’s reign, nothing remarkable happened but after two years, the subsequent events took place. Surprisingly, if you read the NIV or NASB, this verse is totally different. It says, “Saul was forty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-two years over Israel”. The numbers were added into the text to fix what the translators felt was a scribal error in the Bible. They thought that this verse was describing at what age Saul started ruling and for how long he ruled for. Therefore, they explained it as a copying error and inserted their own words into the verse to fit their own interpretation.

If these modern translators could so easily add their own words into this verse, what else could they have done to the rest of God’s Word? They used the dynamic equivalence method to translate the Bible where they only focused on the interpretation of the verses. This is in contrast to the formal equivalence method employed by the KJV translators using a literal approach to translation. Their aim was to produce an English translation that would be the closest, purest and most faithful to the Hebrew and Greek text. They had the highest regard for the Holy Scriptures and trusted in God’s sovereign preservation of His Word. They did not assume that apparent scribal errors were definitely errors if they at first did not understand them, but stayed true to the original text. The modern translators had a low view of God’s Word and assumed that any discrepancy must be a scribal error. Instead of humbling themselves and considering that their understanding may be erroneous, they concluded that God’s Word must be wrong and changed it to suit their interpretation.

Oh how dangerous it is to think like these modern translators! Once you reject the doctrine of God’s preservation of His Word, you open the door to enormous doubt and confusion. Apparent scribal errors which can actually be logically explained will stumble your faith and you soon find that you are not able to tell which parts of the Bible are true and which are false. Don’t let yourself fall into this state!

Thought: Any doctrine that exalts God and His Word is true.
Prayer: Lord, teach me to love and revere Thy Word!