Holding the Question in Peter's Denial

A note

Now set it back into its own century. What was the community that first heard this actually worried about? Simply imagining that changes the temperature of every line.（イザヤ書 39:5-7）

How you render this one word determines the meaning of the whole paragraph. A translator has to decide, and the decision is already an interpretation. Readers deserve to know that a decision was made.

Now set it back into its own century. What was the community that first heard this actually worried about? Simply imagining that changes the temperature of every line.

• How I finally made peace with a passage I avoided for years.
• A direct look at the part of this text that rarely gets preached.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.（ヨハネの黙示録 17:17-18）

7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

ヨハネの第一の手紙 1:7（KJV（英語））

Finally, back to the text. No amount of commentary competes with the texture of the sentences themselves. Read it out loud once before you read anything else about it.（オバデヤ書 1:9）

19וְיָרְשׁ֨וּ הַנֶּ֜גֶב אֶת־הַ֣ר עֵשָׂ֗ו וְהַשְּׁפֵלָה֙ אֶת־פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים וְיָרְשׁוּ֙ אֶת־שְׂדֵ֣ה אֶפְרַ֔יִם וְאֵ֖ת שְׂדֵ֣ה שֹׁמְרֹ֑ון וּבִנְיָמִ֖ן אֶת־הַגִּלְעָֽד׃

オバデヤ書 1:19（レニングラード写本（ヘブライ語））

Here is the conclusion, which is not an answer. I have decided to read this as a promise rather than a command, for the plain reason that I can live inside the first reading and not the second. Whether that is a legitimate reason I genuinely do not know.（アダムとエバの生涯 19:1-3）

（詩篇 第110章）

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.（ユダの手紙 1:20-21）

1わたしは日の下に一つの悪のあるのを見た。これは人々の上に重い。

伝道の書 6:1（口語訳（日本語））