Volume 7: Issue 3 | May 2024
Translations of the Bible into English
First English Translations: Wycliffe and Tyndale
John Wycliffe and his followers, beginning in 1382, made the first complete Bible in English, but William Tyndale’s translation, 1525-1535, became the model for future English translations. For the New Testament, Tyndale used the critical text, published first in 1516 by the Dutch scholar Erasmus. Erasmus worked from six late Byzantine texts recently brought from Constantinople. For the Old Testament, Tyndale used the critical text Jewish rabbis had worked on, the Masoretic Text.
Critical Texts, Hebrew and Greek
What is a “critical text?” Simply put, it is the result of comparing old manuscripts of the Bible to each other with the goal of producing a Hebrew or Greek text most likely to be the original text. Besides old Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, scholars also use ancient translations. There is the Greek Septuagint Translation of the Old Testament used in Jesus’ day throughout the Roman Empire. The New Testament quotes from the Septuagint more often than it does from the Masoretic critical text. There is an Old Latin translation and the later translation done by Jerome, called the Vulgate. A translation into Syriac is called the Peshitta, and there is a very old Coptic translation.
Scholars, of course, argue about the correct criteria for deciding on a best reading; about which ancient manuscripts should be given priority; and about how reliable ancient translations in Greek, Syriac, Latin, and Coptic are. The critical text of the New Testament now widely used, known as the Nestle-Aland text and published under the title Novum Testamentum Graece, has exceedingly precise notes for every variant reading and where it appears.
The Masoretes, when they had finished their work, destroyed the older Hebrew manuscript that they had used in order to stop the circulation of faulty manuscripts. Thus, when ancient Hebrew scrolls were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956, scholars were delighted to have some Old Testament Hebrew books from before the birth of Christ. While they are mostly the same as the Masoretic Text, there are some significant differences, just as the Masoretic Text differs at places from the Septuagint, the Peshitta (Syriac) and the Samaritan Pentateuch. Even today, however, most English Bible translations follow the Masoretic critical text almost entirely. Now back to English translations.
The King James Bible
After Tyndale came Coverdale’s Bible (1535), also known as the Great Bible, Thomas Matthew’s version (1537), and the Taverner Bible (1539). These versions suffered from the translators’ limited knowledge of Hebrew, forcing them to use both the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint for the Old Testament. The translators of the Geneva Bible – so named because their work was done in Geneva, Switzerland – published their full work in Geneva in 1560. It was subsequently published in England in 1576. It quickly replaced earlier English versions and continued to be widely used for decades after the King James Bible appeared in 1611. The 1620 Pilgrims to the New World came with the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible. The Soldiers’ Pocket Bible, published in 1643 for Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers, takes almost all of its Bible selections from the Geneva Bible. Published sermons continued to quote from it for decades more. Like the later King James Version, the Geneva Bible owed a lot in its English phrasing to Tyndale’s earlier work. (Some have argued that the KJV is the only true English Bible because it is the 7th translation in English, and English is the 7th language that the Bible was translated into. Such numerical games are nonsense.)
King James I (VI of Scotland) did not like the Geneva Bible for what he thought were its republican tendencies, both in its translation and for its accompanying Calvinistic notes, so he ordered a new translation that now bears his name. James hated the Geneva Bible references to tyrants, for example, “And I will visit the wickedness upon the world, and their iniquity upon the wicked, and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will cast down the pride of tyrants (Isaiah 13:11, Geneva Bible).” The KJV removed the word “tyrants:” “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible (Isaiah 13:11, KJV).” (The NKJV has “tyrants” in the margin. The NASB has “tyrants.” The ESV and the NIV have “ruthless.” See Isaiah 49:25 and Psalm 54:3 for “tyrant” in the Geneva Bible, all removed from the KJV.) To take care that the Anglican Church not be disturbed by his new translation, James ordered his translators to use “church” for the Greek word “ekklesia,” which means “assembly,” or “congregation.” He also ordered that “episkopos” be translated “bishop,” not “overseer.” In general, his translators were to follow the never popular Bishops Bible (1568) where they could, rather than the Geneva Bible.
The King James Bible was not initially well liked, especially by Puritans, so King James I forbade publication of new editions of the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible’s main printer, however, kept printing new copies after 1611, just putting the publication date as 1599. Eventually, new copies of the Geneva Bible became hard to find. King James I, and the Church of England which acknowledged him as head of the church, authorized the 1611 translation to be read in churches: that is why the KJV is also called the AV (Authorized Version). Following Jerome’s example in the Latin Vulgate translation, the KJV included the non-canonical Apocryphal books between the Old and New Testaments. Only in 1666 was a KJV Bible printed without the Apocryphal books, and even after that the Apocryphal books were included in many printings for the next two centuries.
Despite its initial lukewarm reception, by the time of King William and Queen Anne (1689-1714), the King James Bible had become the established Bible in England, Scotland, and after the Act of Union in 1707, in all the colonies of the United Kingdom. Many have praised its beautifully readable English, remarkably free of Latinisms and easy to memorize.
Recent Translations
Translating the Bible into English did not end with the 17th Century. In the 18th Century, there were sixteen whole or partial new translations. None of them ever gained traction, nor are they remembered today. Work continued in the 19th Century and on into the 20th Century. Why new translations? 1) Vastly increased knowledge of the meaning of certain hitherto unknown Hebrew words; 2) The discovery of more ancient Greek texts than were available in 1611; 3) Huge changes in English usage; 4) Some startling “dynamic equivalence” translations in the KJV (“God forbid” instead of the Greek “May it not be!” Romans 6:15); and 5) Sometimes misleading etymological translations (“man stealer” for the common Greek word for “slave trader” I Timothy 1:10) meant that it was time for a new translation.
In 1901 there was the American Revised Version. It never caught on. Then in 1952 came the much-debated Revised Standard Version. Some churches began to use it. Finally, in the 1960s the Covenanter Church began, in one congregation after another, to use newer translations: the New American Standard Bible (1971), very literal, but its English a little wooden, the New International Version (1978), a little easier English but of doubtful accuracy in some places, the New King James Bible (1982), which deliberately hews close to the Greek critical text available in 1611, but notes some well-established variants in footnotes, and the English Standard Version (2001), which attempts to combine the accuracy of the NASB with the English fluency of the KJV. By and large, these translations hew closely to the Tyndale-Geneva-King James wording, except with modernized English and with respect paid to more recent critical texts than the one available in 1611.
A truly new translation, the New English Bible, appeared in 1970. Too unfamiliar, it never became popular. The translators made use of the Masoretic Text, of course, but also consulted the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, and the Peshitta. The NEB uses what is called the “dynamic equivalence,” or “thought for thought” method of translating, like the KJV does in its translation of Romans 6:1. A recent Revised English Bible uses “gender-inclusive language,” as does a recent version of the Revised Standard Version. Ignore them both.
The Jerusalem Bible (1966), a Roman Catholic translation also uses “thought for thought” translation. The notes are always interesting: sometimes traditional Roman Catholic, sometimes higher critical, sometimes biblical theological, and sometimes just a note about alternative textual readings or possible translations. The JB, of course, includes the Apocryphal Books as the original King James Version and the Vulgate do.
The Good News Translation (aka Today’s English Version aka Good News for Modern Man) appeared in NT form in 1966, with the OT following in 1976. The quality of the translation varies from book to book. Like the JB and the NEB, it uses the “thought for thought” approach. Its great advantage is that it uses very simple English. Since the average American has an eighth grade reading level, the GNT can be a good first Bible for many.
Two translations reveal some things that are usually only appreciated by Hebrew readers. The translation done by Ronald Knox from the Latin Vulgate (1945) has verses in acrostic English where the Hebrew has acrostic poetry (Psalms 11, 25, 34, 37, 119, 145; Lamentations 1-4, Proverbs 31:10-31). The Old Testament translation done by Everett Fox is neither in the Tyndale-Geneva-KJV tradition, nor is it a “thought for thought” approach. It stays very close to the Hebrew, with quite visible Hebrew poetry parallelism, keeping the frequent repetition of the same word in a given story, translating names in a way that tries to preserve Hebrew pronunciation of them, and bringing Hebrew idioms directly into English – every time. For instance, instead of “make a covenant,” Fox consistently keeps the Hebrew “cut a covenant,” an idiom that reveals the covenant ratification ceremony of the covenant makers passing between animals cut in half (Genesis 15:9-10, Jeremiah 34:18).
Until at least 1660, given the popularity of the Geneva Bible, it was still unclear that the King James Bible would become the standard Bible of English speakers worldwide. Today it is unclear which recent translation, or another one yet to appear, will gain the place the KJV once had. Perhaps the English Standard Version (ESV) will. If so, then Christians can again memorize Scripture in one church and recite it with others in different congregations.
Sadly, for confessional reasons we cannot go back to the King James Bible. It is no longer a translation in the English “vulgar tongue,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith requires (I.8). It is Elizabethan English, the language of William Shakespeare, beautiful for those who understand it, but like the Latin Vulgate, no longer the language of the people. Churches should not put up a language barrier for people coming to worship the Living God who spoke to us in the prophets and in these latter days by Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. He dwelt among us and spoke the language, or languages, of his people in their time.
– Bill Edgar
The Metrical Psalter
In the ancient church, congregations sang the Psalms, exactly how we do not know. There is evidence of both a leader, with the congregation responding (Call and Response), and of a congregation dividing into two parts, maybe men and women, and singing back and forth (Antiphonal Singing). Jesus and his disciples sang as they left the upper room to go to the Garden of Gethsemane.
In the Western Church, Latin congregational singing gave way by 600 A.D. to trained choirs of men or boys, and to monks and nuns singing in their cloisters, most famously singing Gregorian Chants. When the Protestant Reformation began, Reformers wanted to return singing to God to the whole congregations, but how?
Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation that began in Germany in 1517, sang the Psalms as a monk. His study of them along with his study of Paul’s letter to the Romans prepared him to break with Rome. Luther, a good musician, wrote some famous hymns inspired by certain Psalms, but he did not sponsor his own metrical Psalter.
The French poet Clement Marot published a partial collection of versified Psalms in 1533. By 1562 he and the theologian Theodore Beza had published a complete French Psalter, with many new tunes supplied by Louis Bourgeois. These were first sung in unison, but composers soon provided four-part harmonies and even more complicated singing arrangements for them. Derived from the French metrical Psalter, a Dutch Psalter appeared in 1566 and a German one in 1573.
The Anglican Church, declared independent from Rome in 1534 by King Henry VIII, chanted prose texts, either in unison or four-part harmony, for singing the Psalms. With this method one could sing the entire Psalter using no more than a small number of chant tunes, and one could also use a prose translation of the Bible into English. However, outside of monasteries chanting was not the way that the English, or anyone else either, sang. They sang rhymed and rhythmic songs, so there was a demand to imitate what Marot had begun in French: put the Psalms into verse form for singing.
The first to publish metrical Psalms in English was Thomas Sternhold in 1547. He was a minor figure in the court of King Henry VIII. For all but one of the twenty Psalms that he initially versified, Sternhold used the meter of popular English ballads, what is called Common Meter. Common Meter alternates between iambic tetrameter (eight syllables, with an accent on the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables with similar accents) done twice: the syllable count is 8-6-8-6. The second and fourth lines rhymed.
The advantage of using ballad form was that English (and Scots) singers already knew common ballad tunes and knew how to sing them. As with Anglican Chant, one could sing all one hundred fifty Psalms to no more than a small number of tunes, the basic idea behind the later “split Psalter.” What is the disadvantage of using ballad form? Hebrew poetry is not written in rhythmic meter and it is not written with rhyming different lines! Furthermore, while ballads tell stories with a beginning, middle, and end, most Psalms are lyrical poetry, meditating on one or more themes in subtly different ways. So turning Hebrew Psalms into English metrical verses is a challenge, especially if almost every Psalm has to be Common Meter (8686).
How did Sternhold translate? Working from the Coverdale Bible (he knew no Hebrew), Sternhold often used the first 86 in Common Meter for the first idea in a Hebrew couplet, and the second 86 for the second part of the Hebrew couplet, two fourteens. You can see this done in Psalm 1:1. Coverdale: “O blessed is ye man, yt goeth not in the councell of ye vngodly: yt abydeth not in the waye off synners, & sytteth not in ye seate of the scornefull.” Sternhold versified: “The man is blest that hath not lent to wicked men his ear, Nor led his life as sinners do, nor sat in scorner's chair.” “Ear” and “chair” do not rhyme, but never mind: for singing, rhythm is more important than rhyming.
Unfortunately, Hebrew poetry sometimes expresses the same idea three times. Psalm 100, for example, has four triple parallelisms. Even without the problem of putting a triple parallelism into two lines, or continuing a thought into a fourth line, Sternhold often had to use filler to complete a verse. A famous example of filler is “For why?” Here it is in Sternhold’s verse seven of Psalm 1 (Coverdale’s Bible has six verses): 7. “For why? The way of godly men/unto the Lord is known:// Whereas the way of wicked men/shall quite be overthrown.” Other fillers Sternhold used were “therefore” and “eke,” meaning “what’s more.”
After Bloody Queen Mary, who tried to make England Roman Catholic again, died, and Elisabeth became queen in 1558, English exiles in Geneva returned with a Psalter of fifty-one Psalms. Finally, the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter (1584) became dominant in England, and was used for a hundred years. Aiming to be more true to the Hebrew than Sternhold had been, it emended his and other earlier versions. The price of higher accuracy was sometimes poorly written verses, which led to a lot of criticism. The Puritan poet John Donne (1572-1631), for example, complained, “As I can scarce call that reform’d until/This be reform’d; would a whole state present/A lesser gift than some one man hath sent?/And shall our Church unto our Spouse and King/ More hoarse, more harsh than any other, sing?”
Meanwhile, in Scotland there was a complete metrical Psalter by 1564 that lasted until the famous 1650 Psalter replaced it. Where did the 1650 Psalter come from? One task of the Westminster Assembly (1643-52) was to produce a Psalter that English and Scots, as well as Irish and Welsh, would sing. The Assembly approved a version in 1646. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland revised it with the goal of greater fidelity to the Hebrew and approved it in 1650, replacing earlier Scots Psalters. In England, however, the 1646 Psalter produced by the Assembly seems never to have caught on.
And in America, what there? Puritans arrived in the New World with three English Psalters, the Ainsworth Psalter (1612) used by Puritan separatists in Holland, the Ravenscroft Psalter (1621), and the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter (1584). Dissatisfied with all of these Psalters for their straying from the Hebrew, thirty ministers set to work on a new Psalter. The result was the first book printed in the North American seaboard English colonies, the Bay Psalm Book. It appeared in 1640, with 1700 copies printed. Only 11 survive, with one sold at auction in 2013 for $14.2 million.
Sadly, in the 1700s, many Presbyterian churches in England began singing the openly paraphrased hymns of Isaac Watts, partly because they were tired of the poor poetry in their existing Psalters. In America the Presbyterian churches, mostly of Scottish descent, little by little also began singing hymns that Watts and others wrote. By 1860 the Presbyterian churches still singing the Psalms exclusively were small ones, like the Covenanters (Reformed Presbyterians) and the United Presbyterians. These small denominations were by then becoming convinced that the 1650 Psalter’s archaic wording was difficult and distracting, especially for those new to the church. What does “enlarge me in distress (Psalm 4 verse 1)” mean? Again, how about Psalm 18 verse 26, “Pure to the pure, froward thou kyth’st/ unto the froward wight?” Examples could be multiplied. In Psalm 1 the 1650 Scottish Psalter kept Sternhold’s charming filler, “For why?” “6. For why? the way of godly men/unto the Lord is known://Whereas the way of wicked men/shall quite be overthrown.”
In the middle of the 19th Century, the manner of singing changed in the RPCNA from “lining out” to “continuous singing.” In “lining out” a Pre-Cantor (Pre-Singer) sang a line followed by the congregation singing the line it had just heard – it was a kind of Call and Response singing. Responding to early adopters of what was called “continuous singing,” Synod in 1838 ruled that “lining out” the Psalms should continue in all of its congregations. The 1848 Synod reversed itself to allow local option: individual congregations could adopt what was called “continuous singing” if they chose. Over the next twenty years, “lining out” disappeared in Covenanter churches. It was no longer necessary: everyone could read, Psalters were cheap enough for everyone to have one, and it shortened the worship service. (However, RPs still oddly call the person who leads congregational singing the “Precentor,” that is the “Pre-Cantor,” even though he no longer lines out Psalms for a congregation to sing back to him.)
The Covenanters and others tried for a time to modernize the 1650 Scottish Psalter’s wording. That effort failed. Finally, in 1894 the old United Presbyterian Church and the Covenanters began working on a new Psalter. Seven more denominations joined them and in 1909 produced the Union Psalter. The Covenanter members of the committee rejected this Psalter because it openly opted for good English poetry over textual fidelity and omitted Psalm sections it considered “sub-Christian.” Using much of the Union Psalter, but making it more true to the Scriptures, the Covenanters, led by the Philadelphia elder S.A.S. Metheny, produced its own new Psalter in 1911. With competition from the multiplying hymnals with their many tunes, the 1911 Psalter used far more tunes than Psalters published in the 1600s. Metheny wrote a number of tunes for the 1911 Psalter, five of which are in our present 2010 Psalter. By and large, the 1911 Psalter stuck with the 8686 Common Meter. The following 1929 and 1950 RP Psalters were also predominantly Common Meter Psalters, but by the 1950 Psalter, the gap was narrowing: in it there were 157 Common Meter tunes and 117 other meters, mostly Short Meter (6686) and Long Meter (8888).
In 1965 Synod appointed a Psalm Revision Committee, which produced the 1973 Psalter. (The author was a member of this committee for several years until 1970 and so was present for its policy-making discussions at the beginning.) Here were some of the Committee’s main policy decisions.
1. Replace “thee” and “thou” with “you” in half the Psalm selections, leaving the other half unchanged in deference to older Covenanters accustomed to that language, with the expectation that a future committee would complete the change. Why make the change? In 1611, the famous Quaker “Plain Speech” was still used to express familiarity and friendliness – or sometimes contempt for lower social classes. When used to address God, it expressed closeness to our Father in Heaven. Long before 1973 that language had come to feel especially polite and reverent, not familial and friendly. In other words, “thee” and “thou” now implied reverent distance from God Almighty rather than familial closeness to our Father in Heaven.
2. Let the manner in which the Hebrew went into English determine the meter, rather than using the Common Meter as the default goal. Then find or write a tune to fit the meter.
3. If no good rhyme could be found for a verse, let it not rhyme. For singing, rhythm matters far more than rhyming.
4. Introduce new tunes from further afield than old English ballads or even 19th Century hymnody.
5. Number the selections in a new way, using the Psalm number with an attached letter of the alphabet to designate each selection. Previously, people had learned to identify Psalm selections by their page in the Psalter rather than by their Psalm number.
6. Distinguish between verses in the English prose Bible and stanzas in the versified Psalter.
7. Include Anglican style chants for seven Psalms, so that the English prose Bible could be sung. Maybe chanting would catch on and a later Psalter would have more chants. Using prose to sing makes it easier to stay closer to the Hebrew original than versifying does.
8. Include two Psalms, 100 and 150, using English prose to sing straight through the Psalm, another way to sing the Psalms and avoid the pitfalls of versification.
9. Carefully render the Hebrew name YHWH with LORD, as the KJV did, rather than Lord or lord as earlier Psalters, including the 1650 Scottish Psalter, did.
What of the 2010 Psalter? It removed the archaic “thee” and “thou” from all selections where they remained, except for Psalm 23 to the tune Crimond and “Old 100th,” which still appear in the hymnals of many churches. It went further afield for music than the 1973 Psalter had, with some syncopated tunes written or arranged by White Lake elder Mike Tabon; these tunes have rhythms that would have startled earlier ballad-accustomed Psalm singers. Finally, the 2010 Psalm Revision Committee removed the chants in the 1973 Psalter: congregations found them too difficult to handle and avoided them. It kept the popular prose versions for Psalms 100 and 150 but did not include any more like them.
Everyone as old as I am misses something from earlier Psalters, or stumbles over minor wording changes. In Psalm 95A, stanza 3, I still find myself starting to sing “mountain heights” from the 1950 Psalter rather than the 1973 and 2010 “mountain peaks.” I can’t smoothly sing the verse we sing at White Lake Camp before each meal, Psalm 145C, stanza 9. From the 1973 Psalter I miss Psalm 23A (tune Evan Common Meter), which I sang as a lullaby to my children for many years. I miss Psalm 23D to the tune Dominus Regit Me. S.A.S. Metheny wrote that tune for the 1911 Psalter, and I have always found it a hauntingly beautiful and fitting setting for David’s Shepherd Psalm. And until I die I will believe that Psalm 119W in the 2010 Psalter is rightly called Psalm 119X!
One great thing about the sung Psalter is that when we sing words, we remember them long after we have forgotten other things. One Lord’s Day while visiting her in the Home, I stood beside my Aunt Libby (Mary Elisabeth Coleman, member of the 1973 committee for its duration) in the old Allegheny, RP Church. By then her mind was mostly gone, and she held her Psalter upside down. But this woman who could no longer carry on a conversation knew the Psalm words and sang them out firmly and in tune.
I am sure that people who grew up with the 1650 Scottish Psalter had things that they missed in the 1911 Psalter, just as I miss some things from the 1973 Psalter. I still smile at the “For why?” that begins verse 6 of Psalm 1 in the 1650 Scottish Psalter, even though nothing like it is in the Hebrew. Happily, in the 2010 Psalter we have a Psalter in “the vulgar language” as our Confession requires, and we have a variety of tunes fitting for the American Empire as it is, one nation made up of people from all corners of the earth. Is it a perfect representation of the Hebrew? No, of course not. No translation in prose or verse is or could be. But it’s pretty good, and it is the Word of God, just as the flawed Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God and is treated as such in the New Testament. Our 2010 Psalter combines considerable fidelity to the original Hebrew with clear modern English, wedded throughout to a good mix of tunes.
Copeland, Robert M. “The Experience of Singing the Psalms,” pp. xi – xvii, The Book of Psalms for Worship, 2010
Edgar, William J. History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church 1871-1920, 2019
Weir, Richard B., Thomas Sternhold and the Beginnings of English Metrical Psalmody, Dissertation, New York University, 1974
– Bill Edgar
Third Commandment: Stay Salty
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. – Exodus 20:7
In 1st Corinthians 11 the Apostle Paul informed the church in Corinth that some of their number had died because of their behavior at the Lord's Supper. God had killed them because of their sins at the Table. The chapter lists several of their sins, but what commandment had they broken?
Profaning the body and blood of the Lord breaks the third commandment. When God commands us not to take his name in vain, he commands us not to disrespect him in any way. We are not to profane his name, or his titles or attributes, or his worship. As Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes 5, when we go up to the house of the Lord, we are to be cautious. In Malachi 1, God condemned those who brought disabled animals to sacrifice to him. The issue for God was not that he needed anything, but that bringing such animals both broke his clear command to bring unblemished animals, and showed their disrespect for him. If the gift would not honor the governor, neither would it honor God (see Malachi 1:6-14).
Jesus signaled the importance of the third commandment when he taught us first to pray, 'Hallowed be your name.' We are not to pray for something, and then aim at the opposite. If something is worth asking God for, it is worth pursuing in our own lives. We are to pray, 'Hallowed be your name,' and then work to keep it holy.
One crucial way we take up the Lord's Name and use it is when we vow. People rarely testify in court, but when they do, they vow to tell the whole truth, and nothing else. God sees, and will not hold a liar guiltless. Many people take vows when they become members of the church. Do they even remember what they vowed? Do you? God sees, and holds us to account. The married vow to love and to cherish until death. We must guard our hearts and keep our vows. They were made before God. We borrowed from God's authority when we used his Name to convince others that we would be true. He will see and know if we actually use his Name to deceive.
Since we bear the Lord's title (we are Christians, see 1 Peter 4:16), this commandment ultimately extends to the whole of our lives. We are not to degrade the name by which we are called. Israel profaned God's holy name wherever they were scattered (see Ezekiel 36:20-21), and in this they are an example for us to avoid. We are salt that must remain salty; we bear a title that we are not to bear in vain.
– John D. Edgar
Lazy Souls Will Be Empty
“The soul of the lazy man desires, and has nothing;
but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.” Proverbs 13:4, NKJV
The lazy man desires what hard working people want: house, food, vacations, money for college and retirement. But the lazy man’s desires remain unsatisfied, while the diligent gain wealth.
It is impolite today to describe people as lazy, let alone suggest that laziness will lead to poverty, but that is how Proverbs mainly sees the world. Solomon knows that oppression, ill health, and lack of opportunity play a part in some having little, and there are plenty of ill-gotten gains. But the main issue in desiring and having versus desiring and not having is hard work versus laziness. It is condescending and dehumanizing to hide that fact from the poor.
Laziness in Solomon’s day described farmers who made excuses for not working their fields. “He who watches the wind will never sow, and he who looks at the clouds will not reap (Ecclesiastes 11:4).” Any excuse will do. “The lazy man says, 'There is a lion in the street (Proverbs 26:13)!'” Laziness today shows itself especially in laziness of mind. With regard to “word problems,” the attitude of my Algebra students was, “I’ll do 50 practice problems, I’ll do 100, but please, Mr. Edgar, oh please, don’t make me do word problems and have to think.” The sluggard starts a job, but won’t finish. He works only in spurts when he feels like it. He may not bother to get along with co-workers, another kind of laziness. Some just don’t go to work regularly. And amazingly, “The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly (Proverbs 26:16).”
There is an academic cottage industry devoted to explaining (and excusing) people who are lazy: they live in a society where people like them have not been rewarded for their work in the past; their “social capital” is low; they have other “values” than those of the wider society. The explainers’ big mistake is thinking that laziness needs explaining, but laziness is quite normal. Laziness has characterized many civilizations, for example, those where masters made slaves do the work. Perhaps that is why the Church in the slave-based Roman Empire constantly taught the virtue of hard work. Here is Paul talking to the Ephesian elders: “You yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:34-35).’” Diligence, not laziness, is what needs explaining.
Deep down the lazy man rebels against God’s curse on work. We labor by the sweat of our brow, with weeds always interfering; work is rarely “fulfilling” but is more often drudgery. Work is work! But he who submits to its demands will generally see his desires fulfilled, as the proverb teaches. Not so for the lazy man.
– Bill Edgar
Book Review:
Redeeming Love in the Book of Ruth
by Christopher Wright
Crown & Covenant, 2024
The Island in the title is the village of Bethlehem. It is an “island” of grace because in the days of Ruth, judges ruled Israel, and "every man did what was right in his own eyes.” Evil abounded. But in Bethlehem a rich older man named Boaz greets his workers in the name of the God of Israel, and he is kind to a widow from Moab named Ruth.
Wright notes how the Book of Ruth revolves around three characters and proceeds by dialogue between Ruth, Boaz, and Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi. All three devoutly worship the God of Israel. In the most quoted part of the Book, Ruth proclaims her loyalty to Naomi and to her God: “…for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God… (Ruth 1:16 KJV). (Reviewer’s note: In January 1941, President Roosevelt sent his trusted advisor Harry Hopkins to London to assess whether Great Britain could hold out against Germany. At a concluding dinner when Winston Churchill pressed Hopkins on America’s stance in the war, Hopkins quoted Ruth’s words to Naomi. Churchill wept.)
The four chapters in Wright’s book were originally four sermons, so his main point appears often: when Boaz buys Naomi’s land, he gives a future to the family of her dead husband, Elimelech. By furthermore marrying Ruth, he anticipates what Christ has done for his Church. There are periodic exhortations to faith in the book, appropriate in what were originally sermons.
I have two quibbles with the book. First, Wright says at one point that God is the main actor in the book, but he does not develop that idea consistently. Second, Wright gives little attention to the people of Bethlehem, who collectively are the fourth character in the book: villagers greet Naomi on her return; Boaz’ workers see and hear all that happens between Boaz and Ruth as she gleans in his fields; village elders officially witness Boaz’s plan to redeem Elimelech’s land and marry Ruth; and the women rejoice with Naomi at Ruth’s marriage and the subsequent birth of her son, Obed.
Wright’s sermonic style is easy to read. He reminds the reader that the Book of Ruth is part of a Bible that culminates in the salvation brought by Jesus Christ. It ends with King David, Ruth’s great grandson and the ancestor of Christ. It exhorts us to trust in him. Reading An Island of Grace will make a worthwhile evening read for anyone.
– Bill Edgar
Systematic Injustice
{We title this article "Systematic Injustice" rather than "Systemic Injustice", since the first better captures the realities we wish to highlight. The first, "systematic", refers to organized crime that flies under the banner of legality or that the legal system ignores. The second, "systemic", refers to problems that are endemic to our entire legal system, no matter how we try to fix them. The problems highlighted here could be fixed. --ed.}
In recent years there has been much writing about something called Systematic Injustice and those who suffer from it. Such writing rarely includes any effort to define Systematic Injustice. This article will take the term at face value and not explore the possibility that it serves mainly to extort special consideration for one or another oppressed group. So what might Systematic Injustice mean?
Systematic Injustice is a legal, or at least not forbidden, means for people with financial, political, or cultural power to wrong other people, in a way that limits their legal recourse to righting those wrongs. Does it exist? Certainly! The Jim Crow laws of defeated Confederate States were systematically unjust. Those laws are now done away with. Can other cases of Systematic Injustice be found in our country? Yes, and here are some examples, taken mostly from the The New Yorker magazine, which publishes excellent investigative articles.
1. Civil forfeiture laws were enacted to deal with illegal drug dealers. If the police search your car and find unaccountable large sums of cash, they may simply seize the cash or even other items of value. The systematic injustice? Some police departments use this law to seize money from quite innocent people, such as a man going to buy a used car for cash because he does not have a checking account. The police usually can easily tell who will be able to fight back legally and who cannot. They take the property of the second while leaving the first alone. The article from August, 2013, is entitled, “Taken.” Civil forfeiture is a problem not in big cities, but mostly in smaller locales where police budgets get help from civil forfeiture money. It is a more lucrative way to get money than speed traps.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
2. Trailer parks are legally being bought up by large-scale businesses, transforming them from Mom-and-Pop affairs, where renters of lots no longer deal with people they know and instead deal with impersonal corporate offices. The goal of these distant offices is to increase their profits year after year by finding ever more inventive ways to squeeze those who live in the trailer parks. See “What Happens When Investment Firms Acquire Trailer Parks” from March, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks
3. “Felony murder” is a charge laid against someone for murder that he did not commit, but for a murder that happened because of what he was doing that led step by step to someone’s death. For example, two teens are stealing cash from unlocked cars. The police arrive and one steals a car and drives off. The police give chase, and someone dies. What about the other teen who allowed himself to be arrested for theft? He can be charged with “felony murder” and imprisoned for years because his thievery helped lead to someone’s death. See “Felony Murder Laws” from December, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/18/felony-murder-laws
4. “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights” from October of 2017 tells how total strangers get themselves appointed by courts to “protect” old people. They then ship them off to distant, cooperating homes for old people, and legally loot their estates until they are bankrupt. This game targets people with no close kin keeping an eye on them and who have estates between half a million and a million dollars. If the old person has less than half a million, it is not worth the trouble to go to court and get appointed a protector. If it is over a million, not so close relatives may find it worth their while to go after the “protector” for fraud and theft.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights
5. “Private equity” describes a company that has not “gone public” by selling shares on a stock market to the public. Public companies must abide by a slew of reporting regulations so what they are doing is somewhat open knowledge. Private equity has few reporting requirements since the owners are responsible only to themselves. It is like a small business on steroids. So, Private Equity buys a functioning hospital, then uses the hospital as collateral for loans, then uses the loans to pay themselves generous dividends from their investment, and then lets the hospital go bankrupt and close. Read about how this was done to a teaching hospital in Philadelphia and to another in one of its poorer suburbs in “The Death of Hahnemann Hospital” from June, 2021. This quite legal way of making money is one cause of the declining number of hospitals in the United States. https://www.hahnemannhospital.com/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-death-of-hahnemann-hospital
6. Private Equity is also buying up nursing homes, reducing staff, making profits, and squeezing every penny of profit it can while reducing the quality of care. Read about an example in Virginia in “When Private Equity Takes Over a Nursing Home” from August, 2022.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/when-private-equity-takes-over-a-nursing-home
7. The hospice movement began with the purpose of making terminally ill patients as comfortable as possible until they die. But it turns out a hospice can also be made to turn a tidy profit, The New Yorker reports in “How Hospice Became a For Profit Hustle” in December, 2022.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle
8. Systematic injustice can occur at the national, state, or local levels. An instance of local judges in collusion with supposedly remedial institutions was investigated starting in 2006 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Two judges worked with “rehabilitation prisons” to make money from teens who ended up in court for any and every reason. The judges and those conspiring with them were finally convicted of a whole lot of crimes, but in the meantime, they sent teens away from their homes on the flimsiest of charges for months at a time. Such scams can go on for years, as in this case, without the public gaining awareness and leave their victims with no legal recourse. See CNN's account from 2009 of the conviction of the two judges. https://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/
9. Supporters of Affirmative Action use the plight of struggling inner city folks to assert its necessity. However, most of the goodies in this system go to people from stable homes with stable finances and good educations. Read in this December, 2023 edition of The Free Press the thoughts of a Black man who, early in life, turned his back on making use of the options available to him via Affirmative Action.
https://www.thefp.com/p/claudine-gay-is-why-i-never-checked-black-box
10. What’s going on with the single-family housing market? First, there are a whole lot of unmarried single people with good jobs buying up houses to live in. Nothing wrong with that, but think: if two of them marry, then a house goes on the market. Nevertheless, this happens less often than it used to as the marriage rate declines. Second, a whole lot of unmarried young men come to our country, legally and illegally, and mostly to work. They must live somewhere. Third, old people are living longer than they used to and are staying in their houses. Fourth, a maze of local zoning laws makes building new homes something between difficult and impossible. And fifth: big pools of money, often from private equity, are buying up available single-family homes in order to rent them forever, raising the rents as fast as they possibly can. Pro Publica reports in Feb, 2022, and The New York Times continued in April, 2022 with further investigation.
https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becomes-your-landlord
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-estate-investors-housing-market.html
What do all these examples of widespread and systematic injustice have in common? They are instances of money and power taking advantage of weakness and lack of money. Is this surprising? No. It’s what the wealthy and powerful have always been tempted to do. In the middle of its long war with Sparta, Athens demanded that Melos, a neutral island, side with Athens. When Melos protested, Athens replied that it had no patience for negotiations with Melos, writing to them that “what is right only matters between equals in power while the strong do what they are capable of and the weak suffer what they must (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 5.89).” And two centuries earlier, Isaiah wrote that God sees the grasping greed of the rich and pronounces God’s woe on them. “Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land (Isaiah 5:8 KJV).” And what have some folks who cry aloud about “Systematic Injustice” sometimes done? They raise money to combat it but then buy themselves handsome houses with the proceeds. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html
Worst of all is when preachers of the Gospel of mercy and peace make themselves rich from their flocks and lord it over them. What should elders do? “Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being examples to the flock (I Peter 5:2-3).” At least among God’s people, let there be no injustice – systematic or not!
– Bill Edgar
The 2024 Spring Meeting of the Atlantic Presbytery
The Atlantic Presbytery met in a joyful mood on March 22-23, 2024. We were joyful, first, because most of us were seeing Christ Church's new building in Riverside, Rhode Island, for the first time. By our standards, it is vast, with loads of potential, and plenty of work remaining to be done. But it is already quite serviceable, and the congregation hosted us very comfortably. Christ Church looked at many buildings for many years before buying this one, and we rejoice in where God has brought them.
We were also joyful because one of our students under care, Ryan Alsheimer, has been called to be Walton's associate pastor (for church planting in Oneonta), and we were convening early to have time to hear his three ordination exams. He passed them all, and his ordination is scheduled for April 20, at the Walton RP Church, at 2 PM. Supporters of Ryan and the congregation are invited to attend.
A third reason for joy was the presence of student Stephen Sutherland. He became a student some time ago but put his exams on hold when his child was born with severe heart problems. But the Lord spared her, and she made her presence known on Saturday, charging around the fellowship hall greeting delegates. Stephen passed both of his exams.
Student Dan Self passed his two exams, putting him on the cusp of being licensed to preach. David Coon was elected moderator, and now serves alongside Bruce Martin, the long-serving clerk. Two new elders were introduced to the court, Damian Gray of Cambridge and Ryan Kelly of Hazleton. Each congregation gave its report, with the highlight being a rousing address by Elder John Cripps of Walton.
Miscellany: the Elkins Park visitation team gave a very positive and encouraging report. The Delmarva Commission noted that the preaching station in Salisbury MD closed back in the fall. A proposed Child Protection Policy for presbytery events was discussed and then sent back to committee for revisions. A judicial committee addressed a concern in one congregation's minutes. The presbytery decided to visit two churches per year for the next three years to catch up after Covid. Christ Church and Broomall will be visited by March 2025. Students Self and Sutherland will receive small stipends from the presbytery to help them as they pursue work and studies simultaneously. The presbytery will elect a new representative to the Home Mission Board next spring.
The presbytery adjourned with gladness and drove home through a torrential downpour. It did not dampen our spirits.
– John Edgar
Ordination of Ryan Alsheimer
On April 20, the Atlantic Presbytery met in Walton NY to ordain Ryan Alsheimer as associate pastor of Walton. Ryan will be primarily working on church planting in Oneonta, NY. Ryan and his wife Kimmy are from the Oneonta area and numerous family members joined us for the service. (To get to know Ryan and Kimmy better, see their profile in A Little Strength, issue 5.2, available online.)
Presbytery turnout was excellent, four weeks after the regular spring meeting in Rhode Island. All of the congregations had at least one session member present, and four of White Lake's elders came to show support. David Coon presided, as presbytery's moderator. After the edict was read for the final time, Bill Chellis handed a sleeping Alsheimer child back to his mother and preached from Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16. Preachers are stewards, not princes. Even a president's chief of staff is only staff, not chief. Only Jesus can bring life to dead sinners, and so, to riff on the saying, preachers must faithfully bring the water to the horses, while humbly remembering that we cannot make them drink. Daniel Howe, an experienced church planter, gave the charge to the new church planter, racing through thirty-two useful ideas (Network locally. Do not preach frustrated. Pray for small things and big things. Keep doing outreach, whether you have a great idea or not.) Charles Leach charged the congregation to follow, care for, enjoy, and pray for their new pastor. The congregation then provided its customary excellent hospitality, and the presbyters departed, rejoicing that Jesus has sent another laborer into the harvest.
Please pray that God would build his church, both in Walton and in Oneonta. Oneonta is home to a major university, SUNY-Oneonta, as well as the smaller Hartwick College. Pray also that the Lord would sustain and encourage Ryan in his labors.
– John D. Edgar
Getting to Know You: Ryan and Amy Kelly
Where are you (each) from?
Ryan - Ryan was born in Hershey and grew up nearby in Palmyra, PA.
Amy - Ryan and I are both from Palmyra, PA. We attended high school together, and were "set up" by a mutual friend of ours.
What did you believe growing up?
Ryan - My parents stopped going to church before I was in kindergarten. I was in the 8th grade when we started going to the local Baptist Church. I believed in God, but knew very little.
Amy - I grew up in a Christian family, going an Evangelical Congregational church every week and being very involved in church activities. I never remember a time that I didn't believe in the God of the Bible, and Jesus as my savior.
Tell about High School and beyond.
Ryan - In high school I was prepping for college and wanted to be an engineer. By 11th grade I had changed paths and went to vo-tech for machine shop. Amy and I started seeing each other in our senior year. After high school I decided to go to Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, PA to further my interest in machining. We married after I graduated from Stevens Tech. I pursued a career in machining and ran my own machine shop for 15 years.
Amy - After high school I attended Messiah College and got my nursing degree. Ryan and I got married the summer after my sophomore year, right after he graduated from Stevens Technical School. I worked full time as an Emergency Department RN until we started having children, and currently work very part-time as a labor and delivery nurse for a Nurse-Midwifery practice.
We have 7 children, 5 boys and 2 girls, ranging in age from 20 down to 7. Two have graduated as homeschoolers, and I continue homeschooling the rest.
What led you to God?
Ryan – Around the age of thirteen, I was questioning the existence of God and challenged God to prove he was real. One day my mom was convicted to share the gospel message with my brother and me. That day I confessed to God that I was a sinner in need of Christ and begged him to forgive me. My parents started taking us to the Baptist Church in Hershey at that time.
Amy - I never remember a time that I didn't believe in the God of the Bible, and Jesus as my savior.
What led you to visit and then join a Reformed Presbyterian congregation?
Ryan - Our good friends from home school co-op introduced us to the reformed faith. The Doctrines of Grace were agreeable to me from the start. I was a Calvinist and didn't know it. For several years after reforming we left the Grace Brethren church we were attending and participated in a small society of reformed believers. After 7 or 8 years of this we were convicted that we should be part of a functioning church, under the leadership of elders, and felt led to visit the RPCNA and joined in 2015. Several other families that were in our society joined the RPCNA.
Amy - When our oldest child started school, we started attending a home-school co-op, where we met a reformed family who introduced us to the regulative principle of worship. Through lots of study and prayer we were convinced that this is the proper way to worship God. Eventually we found our way to Hazleton RPC about 8 years ago, and have been attending there ever since.
How has God helped you in the last few years?
Ryan - In all things God has sustained me/us. He has helped me through the loss of my dad a couple of years ago and caring for him while he was on hospice. In raising our children through childhood, the teenage years and into adulthood. He has brought us through many challenges in my business/employment. He has shown that he is sovereign and he has taught me to trust in him and not my own understanding.
What are you thankful for?
Ryan - For the Lord's goodness and for in leading us to a faithful church. Seeing our children confess their faith in Christ.
– Ryan and Amy Kelly
Mark Your Calendars
We note, for your calendars and prayer, upcoming events of interest to Atlantic Presbytery.
Young Adult Retreat (May 17-19) Camp Timberledge PA
Synod (June 11-14) Geneva College, Beaver Falls PA
RP International Conference (June 25-July 1) Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion IN
White Lake Kids & Teen Camp (July 27-August 2) White Lake Camp, White Lake NY
White Lake Family Camp (August 2-9) White Lake Camp, White Lake NY
Fall Atlantic Presbytery Meeting (Sept 20-22) White Lake Camp, White Lake NY
Fall White Lake Retreat (August 2-9) White Lake Camp, White Lake NY
A Little Help?
The Editors do not sell individual subscriptions to A Little Strength. Our goal is to publish with as little labor and financial overhead as possible. Yet mailing paper copies to Atlantic Presbytery churches and maintaining a website aren't free. If you have found A Little Strength to be interesting and profitable,
would you consider sending a contribution?
Make your check out to Elkins Park RPC, designated for A Little Strength,
and send it to the treasurer, at the church's address:
901 Cypress Ave, Elkins Park, PA 19027.
Authors in this issue
Bill Edgar is a retired pastor of Broomall RPC (Philadelphia) and the author of 7 Big Questions Your Life Depends On as well as a two volume history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. His newest book, Chutzpah Heroes: Thirteen Stories About Underdogs with Wit and Courage, will be available in June on Amazon and other online vendors.
John D. Edgar is the pastor of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia).
Ryan and Amy Kelly are members of Hazleton, RPC. Ryan has recently been ordained an elder there.