Greek Versions of Ot (continued) – Goel

Greek Versions of Ot (continued)

Literature. — By far the best work on the LXX in any language is Dr. H. B. Swete’a Introd. to the OT in Greek (1900), which includes full references to all the literature of the subject before that date. See also Nestle’s article in Hastings’Z>5, andhis Septuagintastudien (1886-1907). A popular account with a description of all the uncial MSS is given in Kenyon ‘s Our Bible and the Ancient MSS, pp. 48-92 (1895; revised ed., 1898). The most important recent works are Rahlfs’ Septuaginta-Studien (L, 1904, on the text of Kings; II., 1907, on Ps.), and R. L. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah according to the Sepiuagint (2 vols., 1904-6). The remains of the Hexapla are collected in F. Field s Origenis Hexaplorum quce supersun((Oxford, 1875) . Ceriani’s study of the Codex Marchalianus and Deissmann’s of the Heidelberg Prophets-papyrus make important contributions to the classification of the MSS. An English translation of the LXX was printed by C. Thomson at Philadelphia (1808), and has recently been reprinted by S. F. Pells; another by Sir L. Brenton was published in 1844.

Editions.— The LXX was firat printed in the Complutensian Polyglot (1514-17, pubfished 1521), but first published by Aldus (1519). The standard edition is that issuedat Rome by Pope Sixtus v. in 1587. This, by excellent fortune, was based mainly on the Codex Vaticanus (B) , with the help of the Venice MS (V), and others. Hence the TRof the Greek OT, unlike that of the NT, has always rested on the authority of good MSS, though these were not very critically employed. An edition based on the Codex Alexandrinus (A) was published at Oxford by Grabe in 1707-20. The textual criticism of the LXX rests upon the great edition of R. Holmes and J. Parsons (Oxford, 1798-1827), who printed the Sixtine text with an apparatus drawn from 20 uncial and 277 minuscule MSS, besides versions. Unfortunately several of the collations made by their assistants were not up to modem standards of accuracy. Tischendoif published a revised text, with various readings from a few of the leading uncials (1850; 7th ed., 1887): but the foundation of recent textual study of the LXX was laid by the Cambridge manual edition in 3 vols, by Swete (1887-94; revised, 1895-99) . In this the text is pnntedf rom B, when available, otherwise from A or N, and the textual apparatus gives ail the_ variants in the principal imcial MSS. A larger edition giving the same text, but with the addition of the evidence of all the uncials, a considerable number of carefully selected and representative minuscules, and the principal versions and patristic quotations, is being prepared by A. E. Brooke and N. Maclean, and Genesis has already appeared (1906) .

F. G. Kenion.

Green, Greenish

See Coloubs, § 1.

Greeting

See Salutation.

Greyhound

See Doo.

Grinder

The ‘grinders’ of Ecclesiastes 12 are women grinding at the mill. But in Job 29 the ‘grinders’ are the molar teeth. Holland, Pliny, xi. 37, says, ‘The great grinders which stand beyond the eye-teeth, in no creature whatsoever do fall out of themselves.’

Grisled

See Colours, § 1.

Ground

See Earth.

Grove

Apart from Genesis 21:33, to be presently mentioned, ‘grove’ is everywhere in AV a mistaken tr., which goes back through the Vulgate to the LXX, of the name of the Canaanite goddess Asherah. The ‘groves,’ so often said to have been, or to be deserving to be, ‘cut down,’ were the wooden poles set up as symbols of Asherah. See further the art. Asherah.

In Genesis 21:33 the grove which AV makes Abraham plant in Beer-sheba was really ‘a tamarisk tree’ (so RV), a tree which also figures in the story of Saul, 1 Samuel 22:6 31:13 (both RV). A. R. S. Kennedy.

Grudge

Psalms 59:15 ‘Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied.’ The word ‘grudge’ formerly stood for dissatisfaction expressed aloud, i.e. murmur, grumble; but by 1611 it was becoming confined to the feeling rather than the open expression, so that it occurs in AV less frequently than in the older versions. Besides Psalms 59:15 it has the older meaning in Wisdom 12:27, Sirach 10:25, and James 5:9 ‘grudge not one against another’ (RV ‘murmur not’).

Guard Body-guard

The former is used in EV almost exclusively for the body-guard of royal and other high-placed personages, such as Nehemiah (Nehemiah 4:22 f.) and Holof ernes (Judith 12:7). ‘Body-guard’ occurs only 1 Esdras 3:4 RV of the ‘guard’ (AV) of Darius. The members of the body-guard of the Pharaoh of Genesis 37:36 and of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:8 etc.) are, in the original style, ‘slaughterers (of animals for food),’ not as RVm ‘executioners.’ Those composing]the body-guard of the Hebrew kings, on the other hand, are styled ‘runners’ (1 22:17 RV and marg., 2 Kings 10:25 11:4 etc.), one of their duties being to run in front of the royal state-chariot (cf . 2 Samuel 15:1. 1 Kings 1:5). In 1 Kings 14:28 we hear of a guard-chamber. The office of ‘the captain of the guard’ was at all times one of great dignity and responsibility. David’s bodyguard consisted of foreign mercenaries, the Cherethites and Pelethites (see p. 122), commanded by Benaiah (2 Samuel 20:23 compared with 23:23). The famous Praetorian guard of the Roman emperors is mentioned in Philippians 1 RV; also Acts 28:16 AV in a passage absent from the best texts and RV. A. R. S. Kennedy.

Gudgodah

A station in the journeyings of the Israelites (Deuteronomy 10:7), whence they proceeded to Jotbathah. There can be little doubt that Hor-haggidgad in the itinerary of Numbers 33:33 indicates the same place.

Guest, Guest-chamber

See Hospitality.

Guilt

1. Guilt may be defined in terms of relOrtivity. It is rather the abiding result of sin than sin itself (see Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed, ed. James Nichols, p. 514 f.). It is not punishment, or even liability to punishment, for this presupposes personal consciousness of wrong-doing and leaves out of account the attitude of God to sin unwittingly committed(Lv S"-; cf. Luke 12:48. Romans 5:13; see Sanday- Headlam, Romans, p. 144). On the other hand, we may describe it as a condition, a state, or a relation; the resultant of two forces drawing different ways (Eo 7:14 ff.). It includes two essential factors, without which it would be unmeaning as an objective reality or entity. At one point stands personal holiness, including whatever is holy in man; at another, personal corruption, including what is evil in man. Man’s relation to God, as it is affected by sin, is what constitutes guilt in the widest sense of the word. The human struggle after righteousness is the surest evidence of man’s consciousness of racial and personal guilt, and an acknowledgment that his position in this respect is not normal.

We are thus enabled to see that when moral obliquity arising from or reinforced by natural causes, adventitious circumstances, or personal environment, issues in persistent, wilful wrong-doing, it becomes or is resolved into guilt, and involves punishment which is guilt’s inseparable accompaniment. In the OT the ideas of sin, guilt, and punishment are so inextricably interwoven that it is impassible to treat of one without in some way deahng with the other two, and the word for each is used interchangeably for the others (see Schultz, OT Theol. ii. p. 306). An example of this is found in Cain’s despairing complaint, where the word ‘punishment’ (Genesis 4:13 EV) includes both the sin committed and the grolt attaching thereto (cf. Leviticus 26:41).

2. In speaking of the guilt of the race or of the individual, some knowledge of a law governing moral actions must be presupposed (cf. Ju 9 15:22, 24). It is when the human will enters into conscious antagonism to the Divine will that guilt emerges into objective existence and crystaUizes (see Martensen, Chrislian Dogmatics, Eng. tr. p. 203 £f.). An educative process is thus required in order to bring home to the human race that sense of guilt without which progress is impossible (cf. Romans 3:20 7:7). As soon, however, as this consciousness is established, the first step on the road to rebellion against sin is taken, and the sinner’s relation to God commences to become fundamentally altered from what it was. A case in point, illustrative of this inchoate stage, is afforded by Joseph’s brothers in their tardy recognition of a guilt which seems to have been latent in a degree, so far as their consciousness was concerned, up to the period of threatened consequences(Gn 42; cf. for a similar example of strange moral blindness, on the part of David, 2 Samuel 12:1 ff.). ). Their subsequent conduct was characterized by clumsy attempts to undo the mischief of which they had been the authors. A like feature is observable in the attitude of the Philistines when restoring the sacred ‘ark of the covenant’ to the offended Jehovah. A ‘guilt-offering’ had to be sent as a restitution for the wrong done (1 Samuel 6:3. cf. 2 Kings 12:16). This natural instinct was developed and guided in the Levitical institutions by formal ceremony and religious rite, which were calculated to deepen still further the feeling of guilt and fear of Divine wrath. Even when the offence was committed in ignorance, as soon as its character was revealed to the offender, he became thereupon liable to punishment, and had to expiate his guilt by restitution and sacrifice, or by a ‘guilt-ofiering’ (AV ‘trespass offering,’ Lv Sitff. giff.). To this a fine, amounting to one-fifth of the value of the wrong done in the case of a neighbour, was added and given to the injured party (6:5. Nu 5:6 f.). ). How widely diffused this special rite had become is evidenced by the numerous incidental references of Ezekiel (40 42 44 46) while perhaps the most remarkable allusion to this service of restitution occurs in the later Isaiah, where the ideal Servant of Jehovah is described as a ‘guilt-offering’ (53).

3. As might be expected, the universality of human guilt is nowhere more insistently dwelt on or more fully realized than in the Psalms (cf. Psalms 14:2 and 53:2, where the expression ‘the sons of men’ reveals the scope of the poet’s thought; see also Psalms 36 with its antithesis — the universal long-suffering of God and the universal corruption of men). In whatever way we interpret certain passages {e.g. Psalms 69:28 log™-) in the so-called imprecatory Psalms, one thought at least clearly emerges, that wilful and persistent sin can never be separated from guiltiness in the sight of God, or from consequent punishment. They reveal in the writers a sense ‘of moral earnestness, of righteous indignation, of burning zeal for the cause of God’ (see Kirkpatrick, ‘Psalms’ in Cambr. Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. Ixxv.). The same spirit is to be observed in Jeremiah’s repeated prayers for vengeance on those who spent their time in devising means to destroy him and his work (cf. lliffl- IS""- 20 etc.). Indeed, the prophetic books of the OT testify generally to the force of this feeling amongst the most powerful religious thinkers of ancient times, and are a permanent witness to the validity of the educative functions which it fell to the lot of these moral teachers to discharge (cf. e.g. Hos 10:2 ff.: Joel 1:4 ff.: Amos 4:9 ff.: Micah 3:4 ff.: Haggai 2:21 f.: Zee S^- etc.).

4. The final act in this great formative process is historically cormeoted with the life and work of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Atonement, however interpreted or systematized, involves belief in, and the realization of, the guilt of the entire human race. The symbolic Levitical rite in which ‘the goat for Azazel’ bore the guilt (EV ‘iniquities,’ Leviticus 16:22) and the punishment of the nation, shadows forth clearly and unmistakably the nature of the burden laid on Jesus, as the Son of Man. Involved, as a result of the Incarnation, in the limitations and fate of the human race. He in a profoundly real way entered into the conditions of its present life (see Isaiah 53:12. where the suffering Servant is said to bear the consequences of man’s present position in regard to God; cf. 1 Peter 2). Taking the nature of Adam’s race. He became involved, so to speak, in a mystic but none the less real sense, in its guilt, while Gethsemane and Calvary are eternal witnesses to the tremendous load willingly borne by Jesus (John 10:18) as the price of the world’s guilt, at the hands of a just and holy but a loving and merciful God (John 3:16 f.; Romans 5:8. Ephesians 2:3 f.: 1 Thessalonians 1:10. Revelation 15:1; cf. Exodus 34:7).

‘By submitting to the awful experience which forced from Him the cry, " My God, my God, why hast Thou foisaken Me?" and by the Death which followed. He made our real relation to God His own, while retaining — and, in the very act of submitting to the penalty of sin, revealine in the highest form — the absolute perfection of His moral lite and the steadfastness of His eternal union with the Father’ (Dale, The Atonement, p. 425).

It is only in the life of Jesus that we are able to measure the guilt of the human race as it exists in the sight of God, and at the same time to learn somewhat, from the means by which He willed to bring it home to the consciousness of men, of the full meaning of its character as an awful but objective reality. Man’s position in regard to God, looked on as the result of sin, is the extent and the measure of his guilt.

‘Only He, who knew in Himself the measure of the holiness of God, could realize also, in the human nature which He had made His own, the full depth of the alienation of sin from God, the real character of the penal averting of God’s face. Only He, who sounded the depths of human consciousness in regard to sin, could, in the power of His own inherent righteousness, condemn and crush sin in the fiesh. The suffering involved in this is not, in Him, punishment or the terror of punishment;- but it is the fun realizing, in the peraonal consciousness, of the truth of sin, and the disciplinary pain of the conquest of sin;- it is that full selfidentification of humannature, within ran^eofsin’schalienge and sin’s scourge, with holiness as the Divine condemnation of sin, which was at once the necessity — and the impossibility— of human penitence. The nearest — and yet how distant! — an approach to it in our experience we recognize, not in the wild sin-terrified cry of the guilty, but rather in those whoae profound self -identification with the guilty overshadows them with a darkness and a shame, vital indeed to their being, yet at heart tranquil, because it is not confused with the blurring consciousness of a personal ain’ (Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 130).

6. The clearest and most emphatic exposition of the fruits of the Incarnation, with respect to human guilt, is to be found in the partly systematized Christology of St. Paul, where life ‘in the Spirit’ is asserted to be the norm of Christian activity (Romans 8:9 ff.). ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’ (8:1) is a reversal of the verdict of ‘Guilty’ against the race (cf. Colossians 3:6 f.: 1 Thessalonians 2:16). in so far as man accepts the conditions of the Christian life (cf. Galatians 5:17 f.). Where the conditions are not fulfilled, he is not included in the new order, for ‘if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.’ His guilt is aggravated by ‘neglecting so great salvation’ (Hebrews 2:3; cf. John 15:22, 24. Matthew 11). and the sentence pronounced against the disobedience of the enlightened is, humanly speaking at least, irreversible (Hebrews 6:4 ff. 10:29 ff.). ). J. R. Willis.

GUILT -OFFERING.— See Saceiitoe and Offekinq.

Gulf

The only instance of the use of this word in the Bible occurs in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:26 ; cf . Numbers 16:30 where the word ‘pit’ is the translation of Hades or Sheol). Some commentators have discovered in Jesus’ employment of this term (‘chasm’), as well as in His assertion of the possibility of conversation, an approval in general terms of a current Rabbinical belief that the souls of the righteous and of the wicked exist after death in different compartments of the same under world (see J. Lightfoot, Hot. Heb. iii. p. 175). It is not possible, however, to construct a theory of Jesus’ belief as to the intermediate state from evidence so scanty. Indeed, signs are not lacking that on this occasion He employs the language of metaphor in order to guard against placing His imprimatur on useless and materialistic speculations. The expressions ‘from afar’ (v. 23) and ‘a great gulf’ (v. 26) do not harmonize with the idea of holding a conversation; and it seems plain that they form but subsidiary portions of a parable by which He means to teach a lesson of purely ethical import. There is, moreover, an evident implication in the context that the gulf is not confined to the world beyond the grave. Having reminded the Rich Man of the contrast between his condition and that of Lazarus in their earthly fives, and of its reversal in their respective conditions at present, Abraham is made to say, ‘In all these things (see RVm) there has been and remains fixed a great chasm’ (cf. Plummer ‘St. Luke’ in ICC, ad loc). The chasm is not only between the conditions of the two men’s lives; it has its foundation in their characters, modified, no doubt, and influenced by the circumstances in which each lived. The impassable nature of the chasm can be explained only on the ground that it is the great moral division separating two fundamentally different classes of men. J. R. Willis.

Guni

1. The eponym of a NaphtaUte family, Genesis 46:24 = 1 Chronicles 7:13 (cf. Numbers 26:48 where the geutilic Gunites occurs). 2. A Gadlte chief (1 Chronicles 5:15). Probably we should also read ‘the Gunite’ for ‘Jonathan’ in 2 Samuel 23:32; and for ‘the Gizonite’ in 1 Chronicles 11:34.

Gur

An ‘ascent’ by Ibleam and Beth-haggan (2 Kings 9:27). Possibly these two are the modem Yebla and Beit Jenn. But see Ibleam.

Gur-baal

(‘dwelling of Baal’). An unknown locality named in 2 Chronicles 26:7.

Gutter

See House, § 6.

fl

Goel

1. ‘Next of Idn’ is the nearest equivalent in modern jurisprudence of the Heb. gd’il, itself the participle of a verb originally signifying to claim (vindicare), then to buy back. The duties devolving on the goel belonged to the domain both of civil and of criminal law. If a Hebrew, for example, were reduced to selling a part, or the whole, of his property, it was the duty of his next of kin to purchase the property, if it was in his power to do so. The classical instance of the exercise of this ‘right of redemption’ is the case of the prophet Jeremiah, who purchased the property of his cousin Hanamel in Anathoth, on being asked to do so in virtue of his relationship (Jeremiah 32). Similarly, should a sale have actually taken place, the right of redemption fell to ‘his kinsman that is next to him’ (Leviticus 25:25). The case of Naomi and ‘the parcel of land’ belonging to her deceased husband was complicated by the presence of Ruth, who went with the property, for Ruth 4:5 must read ‘thou must buy also Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead. The true god accordingly transferred his rights to Boaz, who came next to him in the degree of relationship. In all these cases the underlying idea is that the land is the inalienable property of the clan or’ family’ (Ruth 2:1) in the wider sense.

The duties of the god, however, extended not merely to the property but also to the person of a relative. Should the latter have been compelled by misfortune to sell himself as a slave, it fell to his next of kin to redeem him. Hence arose an extensive use of the verb and its participle in a figurative sense, by which J" is represented as a god (EV redeemer), and Israel as His redeemed (so esp. in Isaiah 41:14 43:14 and oft.).

2. The most serious of all the duties incumbent on the god, in earlier times more particularly, was that of avenging the murder of a relative. In this capacity he was known as the avenger of blood (.gB’el hod-dam). The practice of blood-revenge is one of the most widely spread customs of human society, and is by no means confined to the Semitic races, although it is still found in full vigour among the modern Arabs. By the Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula, for instance, the hereditary vendetta is kept up to the fifth generation (see tjie interesting details given in Lord Cromer’s Report on Egypt, 1906, 13 ff.).

In primitive times, therefore, if a Hebrew was slain, it was the sacred duty of his next of kin to avenge his blood by procuring the death of his slayer. This, it must be emphasized, was in no sense a matter of private vengeance. It was the affair of the whole clan, and even tribe, of the murdered man (2 Samuel 14:7). the former, as it were, delegating its rights to the nearest relatives. Hebrew legislation sought to limit the application, and generally to regulate the exercise, of this principle of a life for a life. Thus the Book of the Covenant removes from its application the case of accidental homicide (Exodus 21; cf. Deuteronomy 19:1–13. Numbers 35:9–34). while the legislation of Dt. further restricts the sphere of the vendetta to the actual criminal (Deuteronomy 24:16). In the older legislation the local high places appear as asylums for the manslayer, until his case should be proved to be one of wilful murder, when he was handed over to the relatives of the man he had slain (Exodus 21:13, 14). With the abolition of the local sanctuaries by the reforms of Josiah it was necessary to appoint certain special sanctuaries, which are known as cities of refuge (see Refuge [Cities ofJ).

An interesting feature of the regulations concerning blood-revenge among the Hebrews is the almost total absence (cf. Exodus 21:30) of any legal provision for compounding with the relatives of the murdered man by means of a money payment, the poini of the Greeks (see Butcher and Lang’s tr. of the Odyssey, 408 ff.) and the wergdd of Saxon and Old English law.

A. R. S. Kennedy.