Stanek Sunday quote: “Your wrongs have separated you from God”
The LORD is not too weak to save or his ear too deaf to hear. But your wrongs have separated you from your God, and your sins have made him hide his face so that he doesn’t hear you.
Your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers are stained with sin. You speak lies, and you mutter wicked things.
No one calls for justice, and no one pleads his case truthfully. People trust pointless arguments and speak lies. They conceive trouble and give birth to evil.
~ Isaiah 59:1-4, God’s Word translation
Same verses, The Message translation:
Look! Listen! God’s arm is not amputated – he can still save. God’s ears are not stopped up – he can still hear. There’s nothing wrong with God; the wrong is in you. Your wrongheaded lives caused the split between you and God. Your sins got between you so that he doesn’t hear.
Your hands are drenched in blood, your fingers dripping with guilt, Your lips smeared with lies, your tongue swollen from muttering obscenities.
No one speaks up for the right, no one deals fairly. They trust in illusion, they tell lies, they get pregnant with mischief and have sin-babies.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
they get pregnant with mischief and have sin-babies.
Looks like someone has been messing with the Word of God – it ignores the parallelism in Hebrew poetry by transposing the metaphor and the meaning. If evil was only a matter of mischievousness incarnate it’d be easier to avoid and fight. it doesn’t do justice to Isaiah’s passage.
This same pregnancy metaphor is also found in James 1:15:
“Then, after lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and completely mature sin gives birth to death.”
No doubt James was reading Isaiah, but did a much better job conveying the meaning.
There’s also something strange that happens with the Message – it turns everyone into a female/mother, seemingly either having been raped by evil, or given in to a bad boy. It makes passive what is really an accusation of aggression: the act of illegitimate fathering via lies and non-commitment.
Our culture has become so feminine-centric, it distorts historical documents which were primarily aimed at men.
What weird translations.
I prefer the God’s Word translation. The other one is peculiar to say the least. makes you think about it in a different way, but just…strange.