The Silence in the City in Revelation

In an ordinary week

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.（ヨハネによる福音書 8:59）

• A direct look at the part of this text that rarely gets preached.
• What came into view when I set three translations side by side.
• A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.
• An attempt to read a famous passage all the way through without lifting it out of context.

The text itself

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.（エズラ記（ギリシア語） 2:1-2）

13主は上から火を送り、 それをわが骨にくだし、 網を張ってわが足を捕え、 わたしを引き返させ、 ひねもす心わびしく、かつ病み衰えさせられた。

14わたしのとがは、つかねられて、 一つのくびきとせられ、 主のみ手により固く締められて、 わたしの首におかれ、 わたしの力を衰えさせられた。 主はわたしを、立ちむかい得ざる者の手に渡された。

15主はわたしのうちにあるすべての勇士を無視し、 聖会を召集して、わたしを攻め、 わが若き人々を打ち滅ぼされた。 主は酒ぶねを踏むように、 ユダの娘なるおとめを踏みつけられた。

16このために、わたしは泣き悲しみ、 わたしの目は涙であふれる。 わたしを慰める者、わたしを勇気づける者が わたしから遠く離れたからである。 わが子らは敵が勝ったために、 わびしい者となった」。

哀歌 1:13-16（口語訳（日本語））

A short detour. There is a passage elsewhere with the same shape though no direct connection, and setting them next to each other makes the writers' different concerns visible.

Before we start

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.（ヨナ書 4:2-6）

A short detour. There is a passage elsewhere with the same shape though no direct connection, and setting them next to each other makes the writers' different concerns visible.（ヨハネによる福音書 11:5）

In an ordinary week

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.

The first time I read this passage I understood nothing at all. I carried that incomprehension around for years, and then one afternoon it turned slightly, the way a key turns, and something opened. What follows is an attempt to describe the turn.

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.（ルカによる福音書 4:44）

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.

One word that snags

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.（テモテへの第一の手紙 5:25）

4And let the maiden which pleaseth the king be queen instead of Vashti. And the thing pleased the king; and he did so.

5Now in Shushan the palace there was a certain Jew, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite;

6Who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away.

7And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter.

エステル記 2:4-7（KJV（英語））