I told you in last Fors to learn the 15th chapter of Genesis by heart. Too probably, you have done nothing of the sort; but, at any rate, let us now read it together, that I may tell you, of each verse, what I wanted, (and still beg,) you to learn it for.
1. “The word of God came to Abram.” Of course you can’t imagine such a thing as that the word of God should ever come to you? Is that because you are worse, or better, than Abram?—because you are a more, or less, civilized person than he? I leave you to answer that question for yourself;—only, as I have told you often before, but cannot repeat too often, find out first what the Word is; and don’t suppose that the printed thing in your hand, which you call a Bible, is the Word of God, and that the said Word may therefore always be bought at a pious stationer’s for eighteen-pence.
Farther, in the “Explanatory and Critical Commentary and Revision of the Translation” (of the [[142]]Holy Bible) by Bishops and other Clergy of the Established Church, published in 1871, by Mr. John Murray, you will find the interesting statement, respecting this verse, that “This is the first time that the expression—so frequent afterwards—‘the Word of the Lord’ occurs in the Bible.” The expression is certainly rather frequent afterwards; and one might have perhaps expected from the Episcopal and clerical commentators, on this, its first occurrence, some slight notice of the probable meaning of it. They proceed, however, without farther observation, to discuss certain problems, suggested to them by the account of Abram’s vision, respecting somnambulism; on which, though one would have thought few persons more qualified than themselves to give an account of that condition, they arrive at no particular conclusion.
But even their so carefully limited statement is only one-third true. It is true of the Hebrew Law; not of the New Testament:—of the entire Bible, it is true of the English version only; not of the Latin, nor the Greek. Nay, it is very importantly and notably untrue of those earlier versions.
There are three words in Latin, expressive of utterance in three very different manners; namely, ‘verbum,’ a word, ‘vox,’ a voice, and ‘sermo,’ a sermon.
Now, in the Latin Bible, when St. John says “the Word was in the beginning,” he says, the ‘Verbum’ was in the beginning. But here, when somebody [[143]](nobody knows who, and that is a bye question of some importance,) is represented as saying, “The word of the Lord came to Abram,” what somebody really says, is that “There was made to Abram a ‘Sermon’ of the Lord.”
Does it not seem possible that one of the almost unconscious reasons of your clergy for not pointing out this difference in expression, may be a doubt whether you ought not rather to desire to hear God preach, than them?
But the Latin word ‘verbum,’ from which you get ‘verbal’ and ‘verbosity,’ is a very obscure and imperfect rendering of the great Greek word ‘Logos,’ from which you get ‘logic,’ and ‘theology,’ and all the other logies.
And the phrase “word of the Lord,” which the Bishops, with unusual episcopic clairvoyance, have really observed to ‘occur frequently afterwards’ in the English Bible, is, in the Greek Bible always “the Logos of the Lord.” But this Sermon to Abraham is only ‘rhema,’ an actual or mere word; in his interpretation of which, I see, my good Dean of Christ Church quotes the Greek original of Sancho’s proverb, “Fair words butter no parsneps.” Which we shall presently see to have been precisely Abram’s—(of course cautiously expressed)—feeling, on this occasion. But to understand his feeling, we must look what this sermon of the Lord’s was. [[144]]
The sermon (as reported), was kind, and clear. “Fear not, Abram, I am thy Shield, and thy exceeding great Reward,” (‘reward’ being the poetical English of our translators—the real phrase being ‘thy exceeding great pay, or gain’). Meaning, “You needn’t make an iron tent, with a revolving gun in the middle of it, for I am your tent and artillery in one; and you needn’t care to get a quantity of property, for I am your property; and you needn’t be stiff about your rights of property, because nobody will dispute your right to Me.”