From the Kitchen Table: the Sermon on the Mount

dupont_tabitha2026/3/7

What came into view when I set three translations side by side.

In an ordinary week

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.（シラ書（集会の書） 14:16-21）

（士師記第3章）

Following the context

Put the translations side by side and the same verse arrives differently each time. One is soft, another is severe, and the original is a third thing that is neither. That difference is itself a way in.

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.（アモス書 4:12）

1ヨブは答えて言った、
ヨブ記 6:1（口語訳（日本語））

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.（ユダの福音書 6:50）

Reading the non-canonical material alongside this shows how wide the shared vocabulary of the period really was. Looking only at what was eventually collected hides that width entirely.

One word that snags

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.

How I finally made peace with a passage I avoided for years.
An attempt to read a famous passage all the way through without lifting it out of context.
I stopped here in the middle of a read-through, and wrote from the stopping.

Reading the non-canonical material alongside this shows how wide the shared vocabulary of the period really was. Looking only at what was eventually collected hides that width entirely.（スザンナ 1:13）

2「万軍の主はこう言われる、この民は、主の家を再び建てる時は、まだこないと言っている」。
3そこで、主の言葉はまた預言者ハガイに臨んだ、
4「主の家はこのように荒れはてているのに、あなたがたは、みずから板で張った家に住んでいる時であろうか。
5それで今、万軍の主はこう言われる、あなたがたは自分のなすべきことをよく考えるがよい。
6あなたがたは多くまいても、取入れは少なく、食べても、飽きることはない。飲んでも、満たされない。着ても、暖まらない。賃銀を得ても、これを破れた袋に入れているようなものである。
ハガイ書 1:2-6（口語訳（日本語））

In its own century

Reading the non-canonical material alongside this shows how wide the shared vocabulary of the period really was. Looking only at what was eventually collected hides that width entirely.