Sense of word meanings being "spread" across different occurrences?

Graham Criddle

Hi

In a recent thread - http://community.logos.com/forums/t/19153.aspx?PageIndex=2 - I asked a question about how much the sense of meanings of words can be "spread" across their different uses. This was raising a different point to the original thread so I am restating it here.

My original question was:

Is it valid to look at all of the way in which a word is used in the Scriptures and assume that some sense of those meanings can be applied to each one?

For example, doing a lemma search against the word used for "formed" in Genesis 2:7 shows that it occurs in:

• 2 Kings 19:25 and has the idea of careful planning
• Psalm 94:9 - the idea of making something very precisely and carefully
• etc

Is it appropriate linguistically to bring these concepts (careful planning, and making something precisely) to extend our understanding of what was actually happening when "the LORD God formed the man"?

David Knoll commented that:

All I was saying is that the shades of meaning you deduce from the ESV are absent in the Hebrew text. The first verse uses יצר to indicate a creation of a mighty power that god may destroy. The second states that god who created ears and eyes must be able to hear and see.

David, if I am taking
your comment out of context, please accept my apologies and advise accordingly.

I have been trying to
understand this further by looking at the references I quoted (in reverse
order!)

Psalm 94:9.

The whole thrust of
this passage is about whether God is taking notice of the way in which his
people are being treated and verse 9 builds on this. This is in line with the
point David made which does suggest that my original idea about this referring
to something being made precisely and carefully is not what the text was
talking about.

2 Kings 19:25

Here I still see the
idea of careful planning. Reading it in context, God seems to be talking about
his long-term plan for the king of Assyria to turn cities to ruins. 

 DBL Hebrew seems to
agree with this as in:

3670 יָצַר (yā∙ṣǎr):
v.; ≡ Str 3335; TWOT 898—1. LN 42.29–42.40 (qal) form, fashion, shape, forge,
i.e., create an object out of existing material, or within existing events of
time (Ge 2:7); (nif) be formed (Isa 43:10); (hof) be forged (Isa 54:17); 2. LN
30.56–30.74 (qal) plan, devise, prepare, i.e., think about future actions with
a particular plan of action as an extension of forming an object by artistic,
careful design (2Ki 19:25)

 James Swanson,
Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old
Testament), electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

So I am less
convinced about my original application of the word in Psalm 94:9 but still see
that it denotes careful planning in 2 Kings 19:25 and hence it could be
reasonable to assume some sense of this meaning applying to its use in Genesis
2:7.

I am aware, however,
that I don't understand David Knoll's comment about the use of " יצר
to indicate a creation of a mighty power that god may destroy".

Can anyone point to
any resources which could throw further light on this question?

Many thanks

Graham

Mark Barnes

Graham,

Well done for persevering with this. Semantics and linguistics are worth grappling with, though they're one of those disciplines where you can just keep on studying!

I think part of the confusion is what we mean when we say 'this word means this in this context'. Take the following sentence: the speed at which they moved was only 1 mile per hour

The context of that sentence is that the walking was very slow. But it would be wrong to say that the verb 'to move' carries any speed-related information. It doesn't. In this sentence the information related to speed comes from a different part of the sentence. So it would obviously not be sensible to assume slowness if if we read elsewhere the rocket moved through the stratosphere.

Now imagine we didn't really know the nuances of the the word 'to move' in the Bible. Does it mean fast? Slow? In between? Or is it agnostic with regard to speed?

One way of finding out would be to search the Bible for occurrences of the verb. If we did so, we'll find that it's used in all sorts of different contexts, and we could fairly easily conclude that it was agnostic due to speed. We'd therefore know that when we read the rocket moved through the stratosphere it doesn't necessarily mean the rocket is travelling slowly.

Similarly with your verb יצר. If you do a search on how it's translated, you'll find that it's used quite a few times - enough to get a good sense of its meaning. (You need to be careful of words that are used just occasionally). When you examine those verses, you do find that the word is most often used in context of design and manufacture. The lexicons also support this. I understand your concept of 'careful planning', but I think this is going slightly beyond the evidence. The concept of planning is clearly there, but I'm not sure about the carefulness. Could the word be used (for example) of a potter or swordsmith forming a poor quality pot or sword? I suspect it could. Just like the quality of 'speed' is inherited from the vehicle, the quality of 'carefulness' is inherited from the maker, it's not in the word itself.

So in terms of resources, I'm recommending a search, and your lexicons. Searching the lexicons for references to your Bible verse will probably be helpful, too.