Confused about the Guides

Roy Daniel said:

I have a question concerning the Guides. If we are trying to use Exegetical Guide to find out the Hebrew and Greek definition by using the Word by Word section and when we have discovered the definition it is the same or almost the same word as the English word in our English Bible. For Example if we are doing a Word by Word on John 4:10 and we are looking up the word living in the verse; the lemma word is zao~ and the definition is – to live. Which I think is the root word for living. So similarly I have come across several words I have looked up and the definition is the same as the original English word in the verse. In this case the original word to lookup was – “living” and the definition was “to live”.

There's a lot of good stuff that's been said here already. I'll try not to repeat what's been said. I would add that any 'personal translation' that changes the meaning of how a passage is commonly translated should be treated with great suspicion.

In the specific case you mention above, I was most helped by a casual conversation I had in Spanish with someone who mentioned "agua viviente" (living water) but not in a Biblical context. He was talking about running water, as opposed to stagnant water. When I returned to my study, I wondered if the Bible's use of the phrase 'living water' meant running water, instead of non-running water. I checked a few passages, and a commentary or two, and found out that it did!

All that to say, sometimes merely knowing the meaning of the words isn't enough to understand the meaning. in John 4, Jesus is contrasting well water (not stagnant, but not running water either), with living (running) water, and is using an intentional play on words to say more than might have been immediately obvious to the woman He was talking to. Our problem, as English speakers, is we hear the 2nd meaning, but not the primary, missing the subtlety in the conversation.

Now, I do word studies. I do them a lot. But when doing them, it's absolutely essential to look at the words in their context, as words always convey meaning in context. For the above you might do a phrase search (in English) of "living water" and look at the original language behind the translation. You'll probably not find much of interest there. But what might be helpful is to look at other places where "living water" is found, and see if my conclusions (e.g.) are right or wrong.Searching in English will give different results depending on your translation, even this can be helpful (e.g., ESV Song 4:15 has "living water" where NIV84 has "flowing water" - interesting, isn't it.).

Another way to search is to do a lemma search for zao and find any verses that also contain the lemma for the word translated "water" (hudor) But you'll only find one other verse (John 7:38, BTW Rev.7:17 uses zoe the noun form of zao - so even a lemma search would miss that one).

Back to my Spanish interaction. Speaking 2 languages has made me more sensitive to the idea that there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between words and meaning. If you have something said in English and translate it into Spanish, it will probably require more words -- but so does translating a thought originally expressed in Spanish into English. Words have meaning in the context in which they are spoken, but also in their culture. Some words have so much meaning, or such a wide range of meaning that several words would be needed in another language to translate the meaning carried in the given context. NOTE: translators already know this! That's why the same word might be translated differently, depending on the context. Consider it dangerous to disagree with them - they're experts in these things.

One final thought: word studies sometimes yield nothing new, and confirm what we thought we knew. That's a good thing. Sometimes such studies open other possibilities, or nuances, that enhance our understanding. That's good too (assuming we're not reading into the context what isn't there). And sometimes somebody says "what this word really means in the original is...", and we can do a word study to confirm, or deny the 'new and improved' meaning. Word studies have their place. I like them and use them frequently. But they should always be done in the context of a well-rounded knowledge of the original language, translation challenges, other scholarship (read some commentaries too!), and, if I may emphasize these two, the Christian community and prayer.

"That's all I have to say about that" Or, to say the same thing in Spanish, "Ya."