[B-Greek] Heb 3,16

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sun May 2 08:18:30 EDT 2004


> TINES GAR AKOUSANTES PAREPIKRANAN; ALL' OU PANTES hOI
> EXELQONTES EX AIGUPTOU DIA MWUSEWS;
>
> 17...
> TISIN DE PROSWCQISEN TESSERAPONTA ETH; OUCI TOIS
> AMARTHSASIN, hWN TA KWLA EPESEN EN THi ERHMWi
>
> The NET Bible takes this:
>
> 3:15 As it says, "Oh, that today you would listen as
> he speaks! Do not harden your hearts as in the
> rebellion."
> 3:16 For which ones heard and rebelled? Was it not all
> who came out of Egypt under Moses leadership?
> 3:17 And against whom was God provoked for forty
> years? Was it not those who sinned, whose dead bodies
> fell in the wilderness?
>
> Does 16 have to be a question? Why not translate it:
>
> "For some having heard rebelled (but not all those led
> out of Egypt by Moses)"
>
> It seems possible that verse 16 is clarifying that the
> writer does not mean ALL rebelled. As verse 17 further
> clarifies those the writer had in mind, namely, not
> ALL, but those who sinned.

The KJV translates "some", possibly because it was based on some late mss
which have TINE/S rather than TI/NES (who). (See note in NA 27). However,
because of the parallelism that Carl has mentioned and the fact that there
is no finite verb in the second sentences, it is more likely that the
correct understanding is "who".

That the word "all" is used as a hyperbole in the Bible is common enough, so
that the logical difficulty is only apparent, and caused by imposing an
English thought pattern unto the Hebrew thought pattern as expressed here in
Greek. For all practical purposes "all" rebelled. The focus is on rebellion,
not on the few people out of hundreds of thousands who did not. To take it
as "some" spoils the rhetorical power of the passage.

Iver Larsen





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