Need help please

In my Precept class this week one of the questions in the work book was and I quote “in Judges 3:4, the word translated ‘obey’ is literally ‘hear’. Why do you suppose the translators chose to use the word obey?”

Judges 3:4 (NASB95) 4 They were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.

Is there resources in L4 that I can put together that would help me know this?

Thanks

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Comments

MJ. Smith

Without knowing what you have in your library, I'd suggest that you run a passage guide on the verse and check the results in the Commentary section. Also useful is a Bible Word Study on the Hebrew lemma.

From the response below, I think my answer is probably much more than you want to know.[:D]

Mark Smith

Sam,

First this seems like a thought question rather than a research question so I'll approach it that way.

Clearly in this case 'hear' does not give the full sense of the word. It must be assumed that Israel 'heard' the commandments or the entire sentence would make little sense. So we have to look for a second meaning of the word.

In this case the context refers to command and commandments. These are things that require or expect obedience. Therefore to 'hear' a commandment implies the obligation to respond to it in obedience. So the Israelites were being tested to see if their hearing was followed by obeying. Substituting the work 'obey' for 'hear' conveys the original meaning.

Sam West

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/138056#Comment_138056

many thanks to both of you for the quick reply

Well put Mark that's interesting

Paul Golder

Why do you suppose the translators chose to use the word obey?

Along with what Mark said:

The Hebrew word שָׁמַע is a verb meaning to hear, to obey, to listen, to be heard of, to be regarded, to cause to hear, to proclaim, to sound aloud. The verb basically means to hear and in context expresses various connotations of this.(Baker, Carpenter)

Probably the best English word for it would be: "hearken" (used in the KJV and its derivatives). But the word hearken is no longer used in modern English, and consequently obey is the best translation of the Hebrew, when used in this context.

shark tacos

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/138084#Comment_138084

Sam,

I am in agreement with what others have said here. I will add that words derive their meanings by how they are used, so one way to investigate what a word means is to see how it was used throughout the Bible. So this might be one way for you to use Logos.

Here the context of the passage is really all you need. "They were testing Israel to find out of they would hear the commands" The test is of course not about their ears, so "hear" taken literally is not quite right. Perhaps we might today say something like "They were testing Israel to find out of they would listen to the
commands" That is, listening in the sense of paying attention.

So the answer to the question is that they chose that word because they thought it better communicated the intent of the original.