To the Editor of the Present Testimony.
Dear Sir,-I have been struck with the apparent connection between the two following passages of Scripture, Isa. 63:9, and 2 Cor. 6:12. I will first assume that there are reasons for a new rendering of the Hebrew, and give the rendering, and then state the grounds on which I would deviate from the authorized version.
Let us look at the verse in 2 Cor. 6-" Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels." I would propose considering this as a reference to Isa. 63:9, the first words of which I would read as follows: " In all their straitening he was not straitened." I do not know what reasons our translators had for adopting the keri reading "to him" instead of "not." They may have been good ones. But it is remarkable that the textual reading לא falls in very closely with the sense of the verse quoted above from 2 Cor. The difficulty with many will probably consist in finding " he was straitened" as a meaning of צׇר. Retaining the kamets, there may be a difficulty; but I suppose, in investigations of this sort, we are free to consider what the meaning may be, unfettered by points. Now I find one meaning of צׇר (and even צׇר in a pause) to be arctus, angustus. We have only then to supply that most frequent of Hebrew omissions, the verb substantive, and we have the sense I am pleading for-" In all their straitening He (God) was not straitened." I may add, that if this supposition is correct, it furnishes an additional instance, and an interesting one, of what sometimes occurs with the New Testament writers-their taking up the words of the Old Testament descriptive of Gad, and applying them to themselves, i.e., to the Church-(compare Eph. 6 with Isa. 59:17; Rom. 8, last verses, with Isa. 1:8; 2 Cor. 7 with Isa. 49:8; also Acts 13:47, with Isa. 49:6.