Pastor's Page: "Behold He Is Coming"

This is a short devotional formatted to fit a church bulletin page (in a large print font) which churches may freely reproduce, if the blog address is cited.

John the Revelator tells us, "Look! He is coming! And every eye will see him!" One of these days, we will hear a mighty shout and trumpet blast, and we will all look up to see Christ coming.
For some, this will be an incredibly good and joyous sight. For others, this will be a time of the greatest mourning. The contrast could hardly be greater. Christians long for that Day; we talk about it with great anticipation, and we pray that God would haste its coming. When it does happen, we'll sing and shout the victory!

Not so, the unbeliever! The Revelator continues, "Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him" (1:7). Elsewhere he says,

Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty,
and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the
mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and
hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the
Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand"
(6:15-17)?

For those who have not placed their full allegiance in the slain but risen Lamb Christ Jesus, the day of his coming will be a day of disaster, not salvation; a day of wailing, not joy, a day of unassailable grief which will never be abated throughout all eternity.

Why such contrast? Why the extreme between great joy and great distress? The great divide falls on our acceptance of Christ's claims over our lives. Maranatha!

The Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation are "She's"

The Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation are "She's"

Yep, that's right, according to my Bible, the Beast is a she, and so is the second Beast, her false prophet.

--at least according to my French Bible (I've just about read through the French NT as part of my prepatory studies for my PhD).

In French, the word for beast is bete (often the "st" sound in English is found simply as a "t" sound in French). Bete is a feminine noun. In English, we generally don't assign gender to nouns like they do in French, Spanish, most other Romance languages, Greek and Hebrew, etc. In English, "book," for example, is an "it," but in French "book" is a "he."

This scrambles up our translations sometimes, as it does with reference to the two Beasts in Revelation.

In Greek, the noun "beast" (therion) is neuter, and is usually referred to as "it." However, the two Beasts of Revelation are personal entitities. Consequently, our English versions are quick to use personal masculine pronouns for them (he, his, him). This is quite natural, and is similar to what we do in regard to the Holy Spirit which, in Greek, is neuter (it, its).

However, in French, since beast (bete) is feminine, it would be quite a slaughtering of the language to assign masculine pronouns to the Beast. Consequently, in the French translation, "she" had seven heads, and no one was able to make war with "her," and "she" spoke blasphemies.

So, this raises the issue of the translator having to be a slave to two masters. The first master is the Greek, which would require the English translator to use neuter pronouns for the Beast: "It" spoke blasphemies; "it" had seven heads, etc. But this conveys to the reader that the Beast was a non-personal entity, when clearly it was a thinking, feeling, acting being worthy of a personal, not impersonal, pronoun.

The second master to which the translator must be a slave is the receptor language, for example, English. To make sense to English readers, the translator ought to use the personal pronoun--either the masculine or the feminine would be justifiable. (Here is a clear case of our male-bias getting the best of us.) However, this is in conflict with the Greek master, for the Greek does not assign gender to the Beast.

All this is true also for French.

In most passages, NIV and NRSV try to please both masters equally. ESV, NASU, RSV, all try to give precedence to the Greek master. NLT tries to give precedence to the English master.

Sometimes, it's a hard task to try to serve two masters, but in translation theory, you really need to.