At the Edge of Jeremiah's Lament

nguyen_isaiah2026/4/27

I stopped here in the middle of a read-through, and wrote from the stopping.

A note

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.（エペソ人への手紙 2:7）

A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.
A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.

Another way to read it

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.（秘密のマルコの福音書 2:1）

Anticipating the objection

Pull a single verse out of its paragraph and you can make it say almost anything. This particular verse has been made to say a great deal. Which is precisely why it deserves to be read with what stands on either side of it.