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Gentlemen, this session can last as long or short as you please. The matter is in your hands. I have some questions from a fortnight ago that I promise to answer, and I will do that now to the best of my ability, and then proceed to answer the other questions that you have handed in just now. Questions arising from our studies two weeks ago are as follows: How does social conditioning affect the law written on every heart?
It's a very valid practical question. I was making the point made by Paul in Romans chapter two, that when the pagans do by nature the things that are written in God's revealed law, revealed on Mount Sinai and follows, they show that they have a law written on their hearts. Meaning that though they have, do not have the special revelation of the word of God, the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, yet there is a law written on their hearts.
And I'm suggesting that there is evidence of this universally. There are certain things that man qua man, human beings, know, whether they admit it or not. One is that there is a God, creator. You'll find it everywhere through the world. Hindus believe that behind this thing is what they call the One. Aristotle believed that, the Greek. Buddhists believe it. They have some funny notions of what the One is like. That's true to say, but yes, they do believe there's the one.
Missionaries from Africa report that many tribes, likewise, while they don't worship the one, the supreme God, they know of his existence. They worship the demons, ancestors, and all sorts of things, but the oppressed will confess that they know about the one, though they don't worship Him. And some of them will say, but He went away because He was displeased with us. So that, yes, there is a knowledge of the Creator, an awareness of the Creator inbuilt into the human heart. And in addition, people know certain things.
They know it is right, is not right to speak lightly of God, to blaspheme him. Though they carry on and do it, of course. And that's why they think it's funny on times. Laughing and joking can be an expression of your inner awareness that you've transgressed some boundary. That's why blasphemy currently increasing on BBC Radio Four, is greeted with howls of laughter. Wouldn't be a joke, would it, if it weren't forbidden?
Then they're aware that it is not right to kill innocent life. There isn't a tribe on earth that says it's okay for a man to steal another man's wife without his permission. There's a universal law that it is wrong to tell a lie in order to get somebody else into trouble or condemned in court. And the man who would do it himself would be highly indignant if he were accused in court and somebody told a lie and got him condemned.
He would be very angry at that. They show in their hearts that they know it is wrong to lie, particularly to get somebody else into trouble. I should not bear false witness. And so forth. There are things written on the heart. That is not the same as conscience. Conscience is then the mechanism that can warn us if we're about to do one of these forbidden things. And if we do those, to make us aware that we've done it and give us what we call a guilty conscience. The law is not written on the conscience, the law is written on the heart.
The conscience is the warning system inside us. Now, this question says, how does social conditioning affect the law written on every heart? Well, it depends who does the social conditioning, of course. In Israel, there were a lot of further laws brought in from time to time by God to work out the details. These basic principles, how do they work out in detail? You'll see, shall you shall not take innocent life? Yeah, but what about this? A man builds a house, somebody goes upstairs, and it's a flat roof, and he falls over the other side. Is it the owner's fault? Well, wait a minute, says the law, he should have put a parapet round it so that people wouldn't fall over easily.
And if he doesn't, then he's guilty. This is a particular application. You shall not, um, uh, harm your neighbor. No, that's perfectly true. You shan't do anything that would be likely to harm your neighbor. Yes, we see there's a point in that too. Well, driving a car at excess speed would harm my neighbor, because it could be dangerous driving. How would I know when I've reached the point of dangerous driving? Well, the government says, well, we'll put a pass a law for that. Now here is social conditioning for you. You'll say, we'll say that beyond thirty mile an hour in a, in a built up area is the point at which you would become dangerous driving.
Well, other countries, it's a different, uh, different number, but never mind. This is a law brought in down the road, so to speak, from the basic thing, you shall not harm your neighbor, to you shall not do anything that is liable to harm your neighbor. And three, we'll have a regulation to point it out, at what point we think it would become liable to harm your neighbor if you weren't careful. So social conditioning can be, yes, it can be a method of working out the implications in daily practical life of the, that deep written law. But social conditioning can be otherwise. You shall not kill your neighbor, says the Old Testament.
You shall not kill an innocent man. In some places they, they, they not only kill them, they cook them and eat them. And in their social conditioning, it is thought it is right to do it. Though I'm told they go through all sorts of funny rituals when they do it because deep down in them there's a conscience that this could be wrong. But social conditioning says it's okay to, to be eat your enemy. That is social conditioning going straight, plain straight in denial of the law written upon the heart. And when modern theorists say that all values, all ethics are socially conditioned, and there are no absolute values.
You'll see, um, they are denying what we all know in our hearts, actually. And if you doubt it, you want to steal ten thousand quid from them and see what they say. Hey, you, you, you, I shall prosecute you. You, you stole. Oh no, you see, there are no absolute values. In my social condition, it's okay to steal from you. They don't act it out. They don't live by it. Huh? Mm-hmm. Question, no such thing as absolute truth. Is that an absolute truth?
That was what I said, you see. Now the question, is this a grammatical ruse, not touching ethical relations, relativism? I have heard atheists say so. Well, you've heard correctly, sir. They do say so. My argument is not just mine, is this. If somebody says, there is no such thing as absolute truth. What he's saying is a statement of universality, is it not?
There is no such thing as absolute truth. Nothing is absolutely true. Well then, if he says that and he's making an absolute statement, you are right to ask, that proposition that you have just enunciated, there is no such thing as absolute truth, is that true? And what is the point of of of pushing him to that? Well, because if he says there is no such thing as absolute truth, and you ask him, is, is that true, what you're saying?
And he says yes. Well, now he's making a universal statement. He's saying that there is one absolute truth, and that is this, that there is no absolute truth. And that is universally true throughout the universe. There is no such thing as absolute truth anywhere at all. Well, he's laying it down as an absolute truth, that there is no such absolute truth in the universe. It's the self-referential fallacy in logic. Uh, is this a grammatical ruse?
No, it isn't a grammatical ruse, it's a logical fact, logical principle. The man said there are very few absolute truths, that would be one thing. But to say there are no such things as absolute truth is stating a universal absolute statement, and therefore, in so doing, well, he does either two things, otherwise, uh, uh, uh, he's saying, yes, there is one absolute truth, namely there are no absolute truths, or else he's saying, no, what I said wasn't true.
When I said there are no such things as an absolute truth, that isn't to be taken absolutely. I didn't mean there was no absolute truth anywhere. But which way does he want it? Not a grammatical ruse. It's a question of logic, what he's trying to say. You see. Okay? Third question. How can Paul quote from Psalms and say such as there is none that seeks after God, when we know that some do? We have examples in scripture, and even Cornelius and chapter two verse seven. And that was very, uh, pers- uh, perceptive of my question of there, eh, because I laid some emphasis on the fact that God recognizes those that seek him, even though they are not yet, uh, Christians.
You see, I quoted Cornelius, do you see, that sought after God. You could quote Lydia, if you like, that Paul found at a prayer meeting in Philippi when he went there. She was at the hour of prayer. Pagan woman, but a woman that sought God and joined with the Jewish women, perhaps, in Philippi. And there weren't enough of them to make a synagogue, but they had a, a regular prayer meeting, and they sought for God. How do we reconcile that for the psalmist saying, quoted by Paul, uh, there is none that seeks after God? The best explanation that I know of, the best way of understanding it is, of course, what is called by the theologians total depravity.
It not meant, it can be a doubtful doctrine anyway, but it's not meant to infer that we are every bit totally corrupt, but that no one part of us is perfect. So in the absolute sense, there's none that seeks after God. If you want evidence of that, ask the most holy man or woman you know. You say, there goes a believer, and such and such is a holy woman, she seeks after God. And you ask her, my dear good lady, do you mind my asking you, you strike me as very holy, you seek the Lord daily.
Do you seek him with one hundred percent of your heart? And what do you suppose she would answer? Oh, I come far short of it. There's much selfishness, selfishness still within me, and so forth. In the absolute sense, there's none that seeks after God one hundred percent as we ought to. And Paul is stating in that chapter 2, or chapter three, rather, the extreme, the absolute, judged by God's law, we all come short. That doesn't mean that no one seeks God at all.
And rightly, uh, you point out Cornelius and others, who's the best they know how seek after God. Mm-hmm. Now then, this is on the question of propitiation and atonement. In our English Bibles, atonement only occurs in chapter five eleven of Romans, but this does not seem to be the correct rendering. Atonement as a rendering.
Atonement, therefore, is not a New Testament term. In the Old Testament, is it correct to understand it as a temporary covering, whereas the fullness of the death and blood of Christ introduces us to total appeasement propitiation. Is it then more correct to talk about the propitiation rather than the atonement? Well, thank you for the question, and I understand the question because it is based on a problem that has been discussed by people for many years, decades, even centuries. The first problem arises because of our English, the word atonement.
When this question says atonement is not a New Testament term, well, that's very good to say that because the New Testament's written in Greek, of course. And the word atonement is what some translators have used when translating a certain words in the New Testament. By whom we have received the atonement, says the Authorized Version in Romans chapter five eleven. I think I'm true to say that. The Authorized Version has by whom we have received the atonement. It is correct to say, of course, strictly correct, that atonement isn't a New Testament word in the sense it is being English, uh, it doesn't occur in the Greek New Testament.
The real point, however, is that is atonement in English a good word to use for any of the words that are occur in the, uh, New Testament. To start with, in that chapter, um, Romans five and eleven, just let me check the point so I don't lead you astray. It's Romans five verse eleven: We joy in God, through whom we have now received the atonement. Anybody here has a version that reads, by whom we have received the, the atonement? Yes, you have, you have, you have, you have.
And yours, I suspect, is an authorized version, King James version? Yes. Yeah, well, yes. The question is quite right to say that that is a mistranslation. Well, I said that's a bold statement, that's an exaggerated statement. The actual Greek says, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. It says reconciliation? Yes. Anybody else has reconciliation? You, you, you, and you. Yes, the Greek word is katalage and means reconciliation. Uh, do you see? Now you can start a discussion as to what atonement meant in the days when the translators of the King James Version used it.
Some people have argued that in English, atonement means at one meant. At one mind, and means therefore two parties have come to one mind, and they are thereby reconciled. Well, that's a handy way of telling it, uh, uh, uh, illustrating it. I'm not sure that the English word atone by itself means simply at one. But anyway, that kind of talk is beside the point. The question at issue is how we should translate the words in Greek, like we found in Romans three, whom God has set forth to be, uh, now whatever do you call it in English?
Let me, um, try what you say. Um, this is Romans three twenty five, whom God has set forth what? What do your versions say? You who have King James, tell me, what is your version say? Received? Propitiation. The propitiation. King James? Jolly good. Propitiation is what it means, yes. And propitiate is the appeasement, eh, uh, of the wrath of God through the sacrifice of Christ. Satisfies his indignation, his holy indignation against sin. Gentlemen, this is not savage doctrine.
God is angry. It goes against his whole nature. Sin is a provocation to the holiness of God, and God feels indignation at sin. And when he pardons our sinners, it's not because he said, I'm sorry, I got a bit overheated about that, you know, I didn't mean to, I didn't feel really, I shouldn't have felt so strongly about it. That's nonsense. God's indignation against sin is just and holy and beautiful. Not a question of, uh, repenting of it. God doesn't repent of it, or suppressing it. That indignation had to have the satisfaction it demanded, and that is done through the atonement.
Now, the second question here, is it better to say that in the Old Testament, um, do you see on the Day of Atonement, I don't know what, I forget now what the authorized version says, in chapter sixteen of the book of Leviticus. That is the ceremony for the day of... What does your Old Testament call it? The day of what? In Hebrew, it's Yom Kippur. The Jews still celebrate it to this day in the wintertime. What does it, uh, what is it called? In your, your...
Pardon? Sabbath of rest. Pardon? A Sabbath of rest. Yeah, well, so it was that. What did the high priest do when he went into... To make an atonement. That's what he did, was it? Yes, he made an atonement. That's what your, uh, English translation gives it as. And in Leviticus twenty three, uh this is verse twenty uh three. Twenty six and twenty seven of Leviticus twenty three.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, How be it on the tenth of this seventh month is the day of... atonement. Yes. So this is the Hebrew word that we were thinking about this morning, Kippur or Kippurim. And some people have said that that word from in the Hebrew comes from a verb called kapha, which means to cover, they said. And so they had the idea that the blood of the sacrifice in the Old Testament merely covered the guilt and sins of the people. And therefore, um, uh, the difference between that and Christ is that he really made propitiation, you'll see, eh, uh, whereas in the Old Testament, the blood of bulls and goats only covered their sins.
But that is a doubtful argument from this point of view. It is perfectly true that the Old Testament sacrifices didn't put away sins. It's impossible for the blood of bulls and of goats to do any such thing, you see. Eh, uh, but it was a symbol, and it is called the blood of atonement. You shall make atonement through it. Kippur. And as you saw that when the Jews came to translate this phrase in the Old Testament and put it into Greek, they used the word hilasterion because they understood it that what was happening there was a propitiation.
You'll see. It was only a symbol, of course. Those symbols could not satisfy God's indignation against sin. They were only a symbol, a kind of a toy money, but they were a symbol of what Christ did. And what he did is referred to in that same word as a hilasterion. Romans, uh, three. Now he did appease the wrath of God. I agree with you, therefore, that the sacrifices in the end, in the Old Testament were only a symbol.
But you see, uh, but God said right straight in Hebrew, in the blood. I've given it to you upon the altar to make propitiation for your souls. It is the blood that makes propitiation. He gave it to them not just to cover, it was a symbol of propitiation. So I agree with you that the blood of bulls and goats didn't put away sin. They didn't appease the wrath of God. They were tokens in advance.
They were symbols. It's the blood of Christ that really appeased God. Yes, that is perfectly true. But the word that's used in the New Testament is used here in the old, in the Greek translation. And to this very present day, the Jew celebrates the Yom Kippur, the day of propitiation. Chapter four, verse seven. Do we quote from Psalm thirty two, sins are covered? Covered is more than the thought of atonement. Does this bring the thought of atonement into the New Testament?
Chapter four verse seven of Romans, presumably, is being meant. Chapter four verse seven. Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Well, yes, but that's a a another way of speaking, isn't it? Uh, God says, I'll cast all your sins into the depths of the sea. That's a metaphor, isn't it? Have you ever seen a bundle of sins? See what happens to them when they're put in water? Well, I don't think you've actually seen it. It's a big metaphor, isn't it?
Uh, to see where they are all swallowed up and forgotten. So a sin being covered is one way of saying that God has, or to put it in another sense, God has blotted them out. I blot out your transgressions, Isaiah. Or you covered your sins. That is from the eyes of God. Those metaphors denote a reality, but as you rightly say, it wasn't until Christ paid the actual price that, uh, um, uh, the, uh, iniquity was finally put away.
And you have on your side of the argument what the writer says in Hebrews ten and the early verses. The Old Testament saints, when they offered their sacrifices according to the law, they had to keep on repeating them. And what does that show? It shows that by their sacrifices, it never made them perfect as pertaining to the conscience. For if they'd once been made perfect as pertaining to the conscience, they would have ceased offering them. The logic is simple. If you have a mortgage with the building society, you and your wife, and it's a bit of a burden, every month it comes round and we've got to scrape the pennies together and just about go without a new suit, gentlemen, to to pay the mortgage and all that kind of stuff.
And you've been doing this for thirty five years and got in the habit of doing it every month. When it's paid, you feel good for the first week and halfway through the second week, and then you begin to think, oh, I mustn't send that because I, I got the mortgage and, uh, oh, and then it comes up again. Yeah. So you feel glad when, oh, you've paid it this time, you feel glad, beautiful. But next month again. When you have finally paid the last contribution to the mortgage, uh, would you find yourself saying when the next month came around, well, my dear, I think, you know, just to make sure, we'll go down to Building Society and pay just a bit more, you know, just to make sure, make us feel better.
You don't do, once the whole lot is paid. You don't carry on the process of paying. No, because your conscience is clear, the debt's paid, final, finished. Under the law, they brought their sacrifices, and they were told they were forgiven. Leviticus chapter one, it shall be forgiven. When they sinned again, they had to give another sacrifice, and so it went on. Forgiven, but they never had a conscience made perfect. For once they had realized that the whole of the debt of sin is paid, then they wouldn't have offered any more sacrifices. The wonder of the sacrifice of Christ is that it pays the whole lot.
And God gives us the guarantee, their sins and iniquities, I'll never haul them up in court again. And because that is so, where such forgiveness like that is, says Hebrews chapter ten, there is no more offering. That doesn't mean you don't need another offering, uh, something else in addition to Christ. It means there's no longer any process of offering. You don't have to offer anything to get the forgiveness of sins. Believer doesn't have to keep on offering. That is a grievous mistake. You find somebody who keeps on offering anything at all, or the supposed blood and body of Christ, for instance, and they keep offering it on the altar to get forgiveness.
The New Testament says, well, you'll know of that person, he doesn't yet have a conscience made perfect, because if his conscience had been made perfect, he would have stopped offering anything, body and blood of Christ or anything whatsoever. When you have complete forgiveness, then there is no more process of offering. Christ doesn't keep offering, he sat down. Yeah? So, uh, that is, um, uh, so, uh, you'll see. So that, yes, in the Old Testament, they were told they were forgiven. Leviticus chapter one says so, bring his offering and it shall be forgiven him.
Or is it Leviticus five? But they didn't have a conscience made perfect, had to repeat it for each individual sin, so to speak. The nation had to do it once a year, every year, and in those there was a legal remembrance of sins, not merely I, I remember being rude to my grandmother. It's, it's uh, uh, uh, the sin brought up before God. That is the solemnity to this very present day of the Yom Kippur for Jews, when their sins are confessed before Almighty God. It is a solemn occasion, and they have to require fast and, and afflict their souls.
To this day, they do it. But next year they'll do it again. They've never a conscience made perfect. The wonder of the gospel is that through the salvation of Christ and his sacrifice, we have a conscience made perfect. There's no need to offer anything anymore in order to get forgiveness of sin. Yes? So, yes, if you like to think about the Old Testament as covering, uh, that is, to my mind, a metaphor that Jews like casting them into the bottom of the sea or blotting out their transgressions or whatever. But though that was a real forgiveness in a real sense, and David can say the principles upon which it was given, yet they didn't yet have a conscience made perfect through the law.
Now David knows, of course, because he's in glory. He's what the Bible calls the spirit of a just man made perfect. Now let me hurry on with the others because you're all, uh, wanting to get going. Um, explain further, please, chapter five verse ten, the phrase in Romans, we shall be saved by his life. Well, I will do that, God willing, on our next occasion. It's in, uh, the, the, uh, re- result of our sanctification, oh, sorry, our justification, Romans five. We shall be saved from the wrath of God through him, through his death.
He died for us, you'll see. But now, in addition, uh, if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. The contrast here is between the death on the one hand and the life on the other. And therefore, the contrast is deliberate, of course. The death of Christ must have caused God infinite pain, the death of his son, how reasonable would it be now that Christ died for our sins, he's now risen and alive, that God would turn against us?
No, indeed not. We shall be saved by his life. And the question of salvation, of course, is a very big question. We're saved in the sense we have been saved, we have been forgiven, we have been justified. By grace, we have been saved. But there's more to salvation than the past, we have been. There is the present, we are being saved. Because he's a intercessor for us. He's able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing if he ever liveth to make intercession for us. So he is our present savior, constantly is he our savior, and he shall be our savior.
For we wait from heaven for the savior from heaven, from whence we wa- wait for the savior who will transform this body of our humiliation and fashion it like unto the body of his glory. So we shall be saved. And the wrath of God is not only presently expressed on certain types of sin, but there will come the great day of wrath. That is future. And we shall be saved from that future wrath. The future wrath. In the Bible, the day of God's wrath is future, of course.
Believers shall be saved from it. Yeah? What did Jesus mean when he said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day? Well, it's marvelous to get an easy question, or at least rather a question that can be answered easily. I don't know is the answer to that. I can make all sorts of guesses. I would be interested to hear if you have found anything. But our Lord is saying, your father Abram rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and was glad. And, uh, they said, I, you're not fifty years old yet, and you, you talk of seeing Abram. Well, that isn't what he said.
He said, Abram saw me. He rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad to see my day. Before Abram was I am. Our Lord is asserting that he is Jehovah and eternal, everlasting. What does he mean when he said, Abram rejoiced to see my day? Well, who knows? Our Lord says so, will we believe it? The New Testament Hebrews, for instance, says that Abram looked for the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. That is a great eternal city. He knew of that. And he looked forward to it.
I don't think it beyond the possibility, it's not beyond the possibility, is that when he thought about the great promises made to him and his seed, and saw how the very covenant said that, uh, he and his seed for the next four hundred years would not inhabit the inheritance. And must therefore to feel, feel that, well, who is this seed that shall inherit? Seems to me not to be beyond the possibility that God gave him to understand. Just like the promise to Eve, the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.
That this referred eventually to the Messiah coming, and look forward to that. It is said of Moses that he bore the reproach of Christ, the Messiah. And you say, how is that possible? Well, Moses would have known, of course, of God's promise to Moses a- a- and to Abraham that God would one day deliver the nation. There was this coming seed, that the future therefore lay with Israel and not with Egypt. And he left Egypt.
Because he had respect to the recompense of reward, and took his place with Israel because he believed that according to God's promises, the blessing of the whole earth depended on Abram's seed, ultimately, of course, on Christ. So that I think it may mean that in general, that Abram, likewise, was given to understand that the seed would one day be the great seed of the woman, what we call the Messiah. He looked forward to that day, and by faith he saw it and was glad, saw it as a reality that should be.
And finally, comment briefly on Genesis twelve. Some people have said Abram was declared righteous when he left Ur, citing that the Lord wouldn't use and bless an unregenerate man. Well, that's a nice deduction to make from Hebrew, uh, from Genesis twelve, do you see, that God then made a covenant with Abraham, uh, do you see, and wouldn't have blessed him if Abraham had still been an unregenerate man, do you see? Um, uh, so Abram, uh, um. Have I mistaken it?
Have I, um, not got it as I should? I don't read in Genesis twelve that God made a covenant with him. Anybody got a version that says, is it my failing eyesight as an octogenarian that I don't see it? Does it say in, in twelve? Genesis twelve that God made a covenant anywhere? You see. I can't see it. The promise, yes, but I don't see that he made a covenant. And when it comes to chapter fifteen and God repeats the promise, I shall, uh, give you this land to inherit it, and Abraham says, verse eight of fifteen, O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?
God doesn't say, but I told you before, Abram. No. The way he will know is because God at this stage and now made a covenant with him and with his seed. Now, I'm not commenting and saying that Abram wasn't a regenerate man, for the Acts tells me that the God of glory appeared to Abraham and said, Abraham, get out from this land and go into the land that I will show thee of. The God of glory appeared to him. Abraham was converted from living amongst old idolaters and being one himself. The God of glory appeared to him and brought him out. I'm not disputing that he was a believer, but I am pointing out to the, the, the actual story, if you want to have it tied down legally, of when he was justified, then you'll have to come to Genesis fifteen, when God, uh, made him the promise and he believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Secondly, then God says, I'm going to give you this inheritance. He said, how shall I know that? And God made a covenant with him. That's the first time I read of God making a covenant with him. You see. Some people say that the covenant of, um, chapter seventeen is the same covenant, but that won't do. For Paul argues in Ro- uh, Galatians chapter three that once a covenant has been made, cannot subsequently be altered or added to. The law, therefore, that came four hundred years later cannot be added to that covenant as an extra condition.
Well, then circumcision wasn't given till about thirteen or fourteen years later, after that first covenant. It cannot be read legally as an a condition laid down, an extra condition. If it wasn't in the covenant terms, then nothing that can be added later can be added to those covenant terms as an extra condition. That's my argument, but gentlemen, as you will, of course, you won't take my word for it. You'll go, uh, uh, out and, uh, think about these things, yes? Thank you very much for your, your, your, your questions.
Finally, do you want to protest against the a- a- a- answers given? Yes, there's a protest coming up. No? Yes? Uh, human, if it comes from the word cover, do you say that the root of the word usually is kapha or something, the root, the word we use in general sick to cover, cover the art. Yeah, uh, yes. That's a No, no, it's a very doubtful etymology, that is, that the word for pitch and the word for atonement are the same word. That's a very doubtful, uh, connotation. It's doubtful whether there's any connection of thought.
Mm-hmm. Well, the, I know nothing about the S'étude whatsoever, you know, the Greek translation, but to use the Greek word and then bring it back by the translators to try and understand the Hebrew one, is that not difficult as well, to try and to get to the bottom of what it means to use the Greek translation to go back into the Hebrew to try and understand Hebrew? Oh, I see. I see what you mean, yes. Ultimately, the Hebrew must speak for itself. What I'm saying, eh, simply by referring to Septuagint, what I'm pointing out is what the Jews of two hundred and eighty BC, and they were Jews and translators, they were reading their Hebrew, what they thought it meant.
So they, uh, yes, they they take this notion it's a covering. The verb kafar in some circumstances can mean to cover, and so they take it, it is a lid, something put on the top, and epithema means something put on the top. You can regard that as a lid or a covering. But that they saw more in it than that, because of of the ceremony surrounding it. They were to make atonement for their souls, whatever that is, you see. And because this is where- how it was done, to make what your English versions say, atonement for their souls on the Yom Kippur. This is the center of the whole ceremony when the blood was put on this golden lid of the ark and atonement was made, whatever that means.
Propitiation, in other words, was made. So they translate the mercy seat thing as epithēma. Yes, it's a covering, it's a lid on the ark, but the re- the next word that follows with them is an adjective, hilasterion, is the place where atonement is made. And they're taking it from the context of the, um, of chapter sixteen, you'll see. It was for them the significance of it. That's all I'm saying, that they are associating this with what is in English called the Day of Atonement and making atonement for their souls. This is the Greek word helaskamai, and therefore the adjective helasterion.
And the, and the Greek translation is pointing to this, this lid and the part it played in the ceremonies of the day of the Yom Kippur. Yes? Does that explain anything? A little bit, anyway. I must have called the manager's attention to the fact that it is three minutes to four.
