Tax Day…

Yup, I just finished rendering unto Caesar the other day. Not optimum, but I did leave myself enough time to figure out anything I’d done wrong. Those forms stink.

After finishing, I rewarded myself by eating some really good Mexican food and drinking some Modelo. I needed it.

For those of you who are bacon lovers, there’s a Mexican dish called alambre which is made out of steak, bacon, and white cheese. Highly recommended.

(Alambre means wire, literally, but apparently here it refers to metal skewers.)

Since I was free of obligations today, I went shopping. My shoes are getting a little small in the toebox, and the soles of my feet have been complaining very loudly as well. So I have been asking around, getting recommendations for my foot comfort and survival.

So the bad news is that, if you want to get some really comfy shoes for standing around on concrete, after you’ve already made your feet mad at you (like I did), you are going to have to spend a big chunk of change.

OTOH, shoe technology has gotten to the point where that big chunk of change is justified. Holy cow. My new shoes are an instant cure for foot pain, as well as some kind of engineering masterpiece.

(If your feet aren’t totally beat up before you start wearing the shoes, you can pay about 100 dollars less and still make your feet happy. And then they probably won’t get beat up, so you can continue to buy midrange priced shoes.)

I went with a pair of Hokas Bondi 8, but there are a ton of brands now catering to this: Brooks, Oofos, AOn Running/On Cloud, Vionic, and so on.

The thing is, there are a ton of styles, and not just for looks’ sake. You have to look for what will fit your foot, and what will solve your problems. So doing your research at home is good.

Also, even if the store has availability listed on the Internet, it’s ten to one that the availability list is wrong by the time you get to the store. So research a lot of brands and shoe lines, because probably you will not get your first pick.

The thing I needed, apparently, was to have a slightly raised and padded heel in a walking shoe, so that I stopped hitting my heel so hard while walking. This makes the shoe look bizarre on the outside, but it’s very practical in its construction inside.

Anyway, that kinda eats up my funds, but it’s more of a health and survival investment than a cost thing.

In Memory of Her, vs. In Memory of Me

Very similar translations into English. Very different wording in Greek.

At the Last Supper, Jesus said for us to “Do this,” “eis ten emen anamnesin.” Anamnesis is a special and particular word for memory, which means to make a past event become present in your mind, to become part of a historical event, to realize that it happened to you also. It’s associated with things like the proper Jewish attitude toward Passover, IIRC.

But at the anointing with perfume at Simon the Leper’s house, Jesus said that this would be a “mnemosynon” to the woman whenever it was told about, wherever the Gospel was preached.

Elsewhere in the LXX of the OT, this is a translation of “memorial sacrifice,” and it also shows up in Acts 10:4 as a description of how the centurion Cornelius’ good works and prayers have been received by God, for himself and his household.

Meanwhile, there’s a command in the OT that the Israelites blow their shofar trumpets at certain holidays and at the beginning of months, so that their normal sacrifices will be received as memorial sacrifices. So there’s an association of sound with the memorial sacrifice concept.

Anyway… it’s a big thing, but not the same as “In memory of me.”

Spy Monday Update

My dad is still doing well after both his balloon angioplasties to put stents in his heart. He is getting some physical therapy starting this week. In general, he is a lot more spry than he has been, because oxygen is good.

I’ve still got some pain in my behind-the-knee ligament, if I overdo things, but it’s not major.

I got myself a mild case of plantar fasciitis again, during all of my dad’s stuff. I regret nothing, because I had to do the stupid thing I did; but I also got a foot massage cushion for ten bucks at the Gabe’s store. It really makes a difference at night, along with icing my feet when I need it and going back to my sturdy plantar fasciitis shoes.

My production speed at work has gone way up, with better shoes/feet and less exhaustion. So whatever has been wrong with me seems to be clearing up.

OTOH, I’m having a lot more (non-diabetic) low blood sugar incidents, even though I have been very good about keeping abstinence only, and using the Church’s permission not to fast. So obviously my body is still stressed, and I need to work harder on eating correctly.

Non-diabetic low blood sugar is not well understood. Sometimes a person’s blood sugar drops like a freaking rock while they have plenty of food in them, because the pancreas decided to let loose a ton of insulin, more than needed. Sometimes the blood sugar is measurably fine, while the rest of the entire body is reacting as if it got a ton of insulin. Some of it might be problems with how the body digests, but they aren’t sure. (There’s even a related problem where you eat a lot of protein, or only protein, and your body reacts as though it hasn’t eaten anything in days — while still digesting the protein normally and delivering the goodies.) It’s also related to things like falling asleep when stressed, or feeling exhausted for no good reason.

There’s a whole host of things that come along with non-diabetic low blood sugar, and I’ve gotten to experience most of the list of symptoms at some point.

And yet, other times, everything works hunky-dory. I feel like I’m a healthy person, generally speaking. I guess everybody has something weird in their health history, and this is mine.

Update on Stuff

So… at the end of January, I strained a ligament at work and couldn’t stand up without help for a few days. I was staying at my parents’ house and was not on the Internet much. I got better, and then I sprained my wrist a bit. I got better, but I wasn’t on the Internet much.

Then I caught a really bad flu that wanted to turn into pneumonia, so I was spending most of my time at home asleep, fighting it off. Again, not much Internet.

Then, on Monday last week, my mom called to say that my dad was going to the hospital for very high blood pressure. He had the same gunk that I had, so the doctors thought it might be stress from coughing, or some kind of walking pneumonia. Mom wanted me to go stay with her, so I did.

It turned out that at some point, within the last two years since my dad got an extensive checkout with MRIs and ultrasound and all sorts of things, a couple of his heart valves had clogged up. He had to have almost immediate surgery to put in stents (using one of those balloon things that they run up through your blood veins and then inflate at the desired place).

It went very well, and my dad is more himself already than he has been. He is home.

They will be doing more stents in a couple of weeks, and I would appreciate prayers for him.

I don’t think it’s saying too much to say that the timing was miraculous, and that the doctors and nurses were very alert to have figured this out. It’s also providential that his therapy exercise trainers were so adamant about encouraging my parents to consult their doctor, when they found out that Dad’s blood pressure was too high.

So anyway… that’s why I haven’t been on the Internet as much lately. I literally don’t know what to feel, because so much has happened; and yet I do have mundane matters to take care of, in the next day or so. I don’t have much control over the situation, so I guess I just have to mind what I can actually affect for the good.

St. Callisthene, Another Female Doctor

St. Callisthene of Ephesus was a beautiful and well-educated young woman of good family; her father was an imperial bureaucrat, the eparch Adauctus. They were both Christians. Her mother was dead, and we don’t know her name.

Unfortunately, Callisthene caught the eye of co-Emperor Galerius (the other co-emperor was Constantius, at this point), who wanted to marry her. The eparch refused the flattering offer for his daughter’s hand, on the grounds that he didn’t want to marry his Christian daughter to a pagan husband.

And apparently Adauctus didn’t think Galerius was going to take no for an answer, or convert in order to marry, because he sent his daughter away, disguised as a young man.

Adauctus was exiled to Armenia, and then beheaded there. He is considered to be a martyr.

Callisthene moved to Nicomedia and then to Thrace, where she earned her bread as a doctor (still dressed up as a guy). At one point, she healed a young woman of an eye disease, and her parents were so impressed that they offered to marry her off to “him.” She had to reveal her true sex to them; and they kept her secret and praised God.

She decided to move along, and ended up living as a hermit “monk” in the wilderness.

After many years of persecuting Christians, Emperor Galerius died (releasing the famous Edict of Toleration as one of his last acts, and begging Christians to forgive him and pray for him). Callisthene then happened to meet Constantia, the wife of the new co-Emperor, Licinius. She helped Callisthene take back her identity and get back her father’s confiscated goods, and even helped get Adauctus’ body returned to Ephesus.

Callisthene founded a church in Ephesus where her father was reburied, and she gave away all his money to the poor. She eventually died in Ephesus; and her day is on October 4, along with her father.

The wedding proposal timeline in the traditional legend is a little confusing. Probably this is about something that happened when Galerius was already powerful, but hadn’t yet been made a Caesar or an Emperor.

The “lucky” girl who ended up marrying Galerius, when he was made Emperor Diocletian’s heir and thus a Caesar, was Diocletian’s daughter Valeria (known as Galeria Valeria). Her mother was called Aurelia Prisca. They were possibly secret Christians during Diocletian’s time, and were certainly sympathetic to Christians. There’s a very sad story about them in Lactantius’ history, and they seem to have been Christians by the time of their execution by drowning, after the deaths of Diocletian and Galerius. They are commemorated as martyrs in the East: St. Valeria and St. Alexandra (we don’t know why — maybe Alexandra was Prisca’s baptismal name).

Penthera = Mother-in-Law

Penthera (the wife’s mother) and pentheros (the wife’s father) are ancient Greek words used in the Bible. They were used in Homer. The etymology is unclear.

Peripatetic Jesus

Reading the Gospels in Greek is so freaky fun!

Jesus wasn’t just walking by the Sea of Galilee. He was “peripaton,” which is a word we know in English from the “peripatetic” philosophers!

It’s an interesting Greek word, because it literally means “walking around.” It doesn’t seem to be a vigorous walk; it’s more of a stroll. In fact, “taking a walk” is also covered by the verb “peripateo.” But it also has other connotations, like “walking on something, like a road,” “walking up and down [like in a hallway or on a stoa],” or “walking with someone and teaching them as you go,” or even “living life.”

This word gets used for “walk” in the Gospels, even in sayings like “Arise and walk.”

And yup, when Jesus went walking on the sea, it was also the verb “peripateo.”

This cracks me up. “Arise and stroll.”

Today I also learned the Gospel word for what Peter and Andrew are doing: they are “halieis,” which literally comes from the word “hals,” salt. They are old salts!

All “halios” things are “of the sea,” and therefore a sailor was a “halieus,” and fishermen were sailors. To fish was “halieuo.”

The thing that strikes me is that… well, all Christians are supposed to be salt for the world. So… yeah, this makes me think.

So Jesus said He would make them “halieis anthropon,” fishers of humans, or of men in the Old English sense.

There are two different words for nets in this reading. Simon and Andrew are throwing out an “amphiblestron”, which specifically means a net for throwing and wrapping around fish; and then they abandon their “diktua”, which is a word for any kind of nets. James and John are also busy mending their “diktua” nets.

(So I guess the internet is more of a diktyon net? And indeed, the modern Greek word is “diadiktyo.”)

The word for boat is “ploion,” which comes into the works of Peter J. Floriani!

And the word for “hired servant” is “misthotos,” which we only find elsewhere in the Gospels in the warning about the hireling abandoning the sheep.

But here’s another interesting thing. The word for “mending” is “katartidzo,” which means both to fix something, and to make it complete or fit for use. It can also mean to equip something with everything needed. And finally, it means “to perfect” or “to become perfect.” The idea is that you’re making something “artios,” whole and fit for use.

People don’t think of “be perfect” as meaning something like “be mended well, and thus ready for catching fish.” We’re not supposed to be perfect like a china cabinet full of knickknacks; we’re supposed to be perfect for activity and getting things done.

This is very scattered, I know. But it’s all so interesting!

The Ravages of Time: Chinese Comic and Anime

Even cruddy Chinese state media occasionally makes something worth watching. Today on Bilibili’s channel on YouTube, they’re streaming a CGI animated adaptation of a Three Kingdoms comic, The Ravages of Time.

The Ravages of TIme is a Hong Kong comic.

The main character is Liaoyuan Huo, a young warrior who is leader of the Crippled Warriors, a secret bodyguard of the Sima clan that uses a lot of assassin techniques. Huo and his flame Meng are trying to rescue Sima family hostages, and defeat Dong Zhuo and Lu Bei.

Other plot threads follow Zhongdu (Sima Yi), Yuan Fang (a genius young military adviser fighting for his clan), Sun Shu (a military woman from the South who is engaged to Fang for political reasons, but has a massive crush on him), Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu, and Yuan Shao, a general.

The problem is that there are five zillion factions and all sorts of plots and clever plans, so Huo has his work cut out for him. Everybody betrays everybody and rescues everybody.

The comic apparently had some very nice art, which seems to get used in the series as black ink drawings. But the CGI is pretty good too, with some scenes being exceptionally complex or pretty.

It’s a fairly long-running comic, which already had 40 volumes published back in 2011. So who knows how many there are now!

Right now, episode 10 just started, so check it out.

“What Are You Looking For?”

The feast of the Baptism of the Lord was last Monday, so this Sunday we skip right to John 1:35-42, which starts on the day after Christ’s Baptism.

(“Epaurion,” which literally means “on the morning (after), on the morrow” but includes the whole “tomorrow” or “the next day”, although aurion means morning. Pretty standard Indo-European thing with tomorrow words.) Later we hear that this happened at the tenth hour of the day, so it’s like 4 PM when John the Baptist makes his announcement.

Anyway, John commands his two disciples that are standing there with him, “Look! The lamb of God!” (‘Ide, ho amnos tou Theou!”) The verb for look is “eidou.”

So they do look, and they follow after Jesus, and Jesus turns around and gives them a look in return. But the word for what Jesus does is not “eidou,” but “theasamenos,” from the verb “theaomai.”

He was giving them a long considering look, or a very sharp look. It’s the kind of looking you do when you need to learn something by looking. He was observing them closely.

And then Jesus asked them a question: “Ti zeteite?”

“Zeteou” is another loaded word. It means “seek,” but it also means “ask, demand from a person, require” and “work for, strive for, aim at” and “think about, meditate on.”

So “What are you looking for?” is a fine translation, but it’s also “What are you asking of me?”

Andrew and the other disciple of John answer, “Pou meneis?” (Where are you staying?)

Usually the Gospels use the verb “menou” to mean staying at somebody’s house; but it also gets translated as “abide” in passages about God’s Word staying inside someone, God’s wrath staying on someone, “he will abide in Me and I in him,” and so on. It’s a word John likes, I guess.

So Jesus tells the two disciples to “Come and see.” (“Erchesthe kai opsesthe.”)

And that’s ANOTHER word for see, the verb “horao.” You can’t tell me that all this stuff doesn’t mean anything.

So the two stay with Jesus that day, and then we hear that Andrew “first” found (“euriskei”) his brother Simon, and then told Simon, “We have found the Messiah!” (“Eurekamen tou Messian!”)

Yup! Eureka!

So then Andrew brings Simon to Jesus, and Jesus looks at him — AND IT”S ANOTHER SYNONYM AGAIN!!!!!

“Emblepsas autou ho Iesous.” That’s the verb “emblepou.” It means, “to turn one’s eyes on, to observe, to consider.” It can even mean “to spectate.”

Anyway… we are told elsewhere that Simon Peter is “bar Jonah,” son of Jonah. But here, Jesus calls Simon “ho huios ‘Ioannou.” son of John. There are various thoughts about this, but the context seems to be that Peter was a disciple of John the Baptist first.

(The Evangelist doubles down on this nickname, and calls Simon “Simon ‘Ioannou” or “John’s Simon” at John 21:15 and after — the “Feed My sheep” passage — from when Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, the sons of Zebedee, and a couple of unnamed disciples all go fishing, and find that nothing is biting until Jesus starts kibitzing.)

(And then they all have a nice grilled fish brunch. Whoever the extra two disciples were, they were freaking lucky guys to eat Jesus’ cooking.)

(Btw, John 21:5 doesn’t say “fish.” It says “prosphagion,” a Greek dining term sometimes translated as “toppings”. The idea is that you primarily ate bread, and that fish or other goodies were the relish or toppings or condiment “with food”. I guess Jesus was hinting that He wanted to buy some fish for breakfast, on top of His bread that He already had? It seems like a customer sort of thing to say, which would go with His incognito appearance. Later, in John 21:9 and after, it calls the fish “opsarion,” which usually gets translated as “relish.” It implies a small fish getting cooked, though.)

(Anyway, I think the point is that Jesus is going right back to the beginning of Simon’s discipleship, when he had been John’s disciple. Or so the interpreters think.)

Anyway… back in today’s reading… Jesus formally tells Simon that he will be called Kephas, an Aramaic word for “rock,” which is then translated as “Petros” for the Greek-speaking reader.

So obviously the Petros/Petra thing is a load of crud, because here we have Petros only, as we do in most other Bible quotes about Peter. Duh.

It is freaky how much stuff in the Greek is not translated over into English. Freaky.

Handed Down: Baptism of the Lord

Some people really don’t like the concept of Apostolic Tradition, even though, in ancient times, every rabbi and every philosopher expected their students to memorize their habits and ways as well as their sayings.

St. John warns us in his Gospel, that, if he had written down everything that Jesus did, it could not be contained by all the books in the world. This explicitly says that John knows a whole bunch of things that we don’t know from the Gospel… but he undoubtedly passed those things along, as they had been passed on to him. And that means orally and experientially.

Again and again, we are told that use of the ancient Sign of the Cross was taught by the Apostles themselves, as was being buried toward the East, praying toward the East, and saying Mass toward the East, and as was singing the Psalms at certain times of day. Usages and forms change; but the traditions continue to be passed along.

We know a few non-Gospel sayings of Jesus that all the Fathers seem to have known, from Papias and from their own teachers. Acts 20:35 infallibly says that Jesus had said “It is better to give than to receive.” St. Clement of Alexandria and others say that Jesus told His disciples to “Be good moneychangers” (or bankers, if you want to translate it that way).

And then there are the things floating around, which seem to be hinted at and then written about later, which seem to be stuff the Church was almost afraid to talk about, or which was only found in lost books like Papias’. We only know about the general format of the earliest Masses because St. Justin Martyr spills the beans, in the full awareness that he will be criticized for talking about it to pagans and the uninitiated. He explains that he’s only reporting this to the world to reduce rumors and scandal. Centuries later, St. Cyril of Jerusalem still does not explain most of the Mass or the Sacraments until after the new catechumens are baptized. Things that are holy are to be left mostly unspoken, and this is called the “disciplina arcani.”

Mary’s ever-virgin status is another example, and the circumstances of her death. St. Epiphanius doesn’t seem to know hardly anything about it, at first, in the chronologically earlier chapters of the Panarion; and then in later chapters, he seems to know a great deal but is keeping his mouth shut, just drawing more and more analogies with big implications.

Another example is a tradition that made its way into some early, early variant editions of the Gospel of Matthew, in Chapter 3, inbetween verses 15-16 (or more likely, inside verse 16). It is quoted by the Fathers, including by St. Justin Martyr, who came from Palestine and Syria, and who would have known the earliest Hebrew and Aramaic versions of the Gospel of Matthew. This might have been a gloss added early to the text, because local eyewitnesses added it in, unless it was added by St. Matthew himself at their demand. Because it was an event that would have had a lot of local eyewitnesses.

Here’s one version of that additional line, from the Codex Vercellensis, an Old Latin translation:

“And when He was baptized, a gigantic light shone from the water all around, so that all who had come were full of fear.”

“Et cum baptizaretur, lumen ingens circumfulsit de aqua, ita ut timerent omnes qui advenerant.”

Well. Doesn’t that explain a great deal about the Easter Vigil? Doesn’t that explain a lot about Baptism, and the hallowing of the waters with a lit candle? Doesn’t that explain the insistence that Christ is our Light, and the Light of the World? Does that explain the paralleling of the Lord’s Baptism with His Transfiguration? And as Father Hunwicke pointed out, doesn’t this explain the insistence that the Three Kings’ star and the Baptism are somehow connected?

So it was something everyone knew. But given all the Gnostic junk, and the Adoptionism, and the Docetism, it might have been something that the Apostles were reluctant to talk about too much in public, while it would have been way too obvious to those who had been there and seen.

There is a lot of this stuff which goes unsaid, but it obviously underlies a lot of what we do and say, and how we think. Now that I know it, it seems to have been on the tip of the Church’s tongue all along, and as if I myself had known it but just had not been thinking about it. Very strange.

What Justin Martyr said to Trypho, in Chapter 88 of Dialogue with Trypho, was “When Jesus was gone down into the water, fire was kindled in the Jordan.” Tatian’s Diatessaron quotes Matthew’s Gospel as saying: “A light rose upon the waters.” Apparently there’s an “Ebionite Gospel” which adds a lot about John’s reaction to the light, and the Father responding to John. Epiphanius quotes it as saying, “Immediately a great light shone all around the place.” Ephrem talks about John seeing “an unwonted luster” upon Jesus’ body when being baptized.

So it really looks (to me) like everybody was adding explanatory detail that they knew to be true, and which possibly St. Matthew had preached orally. Or maybe it was in that lost Hebrew version of Matthew, which we know was still kicking around in St. Jerome’s time.

I find this info to be very helpful even if non-canonical; and I hope you do, too.

—-

St. Justin Martyr does a fun thing in Chapter 69 of Dialogue with Trypho – he connects the Septuagint version of Isaiah 35:1-2 (which specifically mentions the River Jordan) with the Lord’s Baptism and His forty day fast in the wilderness:

“Be glad, o thirsty wilderness, exult, o wilderness, and blossom like the lily. And the wildernesses of the Jordan shall bloom and exult… and my people shall see the glory of the Lord and the high exaltation of God.”

The Septuagint version continues in Isaiah 35:8-9 that “There shall be a pure Way (hodos katharos), and it shall be called a holy Way; and no impure person shall pass there, nor shall an impure way be there. But the scattered ones shall walk on it, and they shall not go astray… and the redeemed shall walk on it.”

Obviously Jesus is the Way, and that was the first name given to Christianity. So it’s pretty apposite.

Fat-Tailed Sheep for Christmas!

Gastro Obscura has a very good article on the deliciousness of fat-tailed sheep.

Lots of pictures of said sheep.

Another article on fat-tailed sheep, with bonus alteration of Bible art. From an Instagram person called Anatomika Science, via Media Chomp.

Exodus 29:22 — “Then take the fat of the sheep, the fat tail, the fat covering the innards, the fat joining the liver and both kidneys, and the fat around them, and the right leg….”

A Chiasm about Dogs and Pigs

The whole Gospel thing with chiasms (a rhetorical structure shaped like an X or the letter chi, and which basically is like nested statements) really fascinates me. It’s non-obvious to us modern readers, so it’s neat to have them pointed out.

Laudator Temporis Acti has a post pointing out the chiasm in Jesus’ warning about giving things to dogs and pigs.

So it’s shaped like this:

Do not give what is holy to dogs

—— And do not throw your pearls in front of pigs

—– Lest [the pigs] trample [the pearls] under their feet

And [lest the dogs] turn around and rend you.

It just makes a lot of sense. My impression before was that it was just paralleling things, since both dogs and pigs are known to trample things or to bite people. But this chiasm is very satisfying.

Posts from Laudator that include the term KJV.

St. Jerome as a Kid in the Catacombs

When St. Jerome was young (he says he was a “puer,” a boy, and he was about twelve) and was sent to study in Rome, he used to go along with his Christian friends on Sunday afternoon trips to the catacombs, to visit and pray at the tombs of the apostles or the other martyrs (or just to test their courage and explore places, because they were boys). And we know this because he talks about it in his Commentary on Ezekiel (40, 5-13).

“Often we would enter those crypts which have been hollowed out of the depths of the earth, and which, along the walls on either side of the passages, contain the bodies of buried people. Everything was so dark that the Prophet’s saying, ‘Let them go down alive to the underworld’ (Ps. 55: 15) seemed almost to have been fulfilled.

“Here and there a ray of light, admitted from above, relieved the horror of blackness, yet in such a way that you imagined that it was not so much a window as a funnel pierced by the light itself as it descended.

“Then we would walk back with feet feeling our way, wrapped in ‘unseeing night’ (Seneca the Younger, Thyestes, 668: “nocte caeca”), with Virgil’s line recurring to us: ‘Everywhere the terror” in our hearts, “and silence itself at the same time” terrified us. (Aeneid, Bk. 2, 1, 755: “Terror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.”)”

So… yeah, St. Jerome apparently did this a lot, even though it scared the dickens out of him and the other kids. Not exactly an advertisement for taking the Scavi tours in Rome, I gotta say!

I wish I’d known about this quote at Halloween time. It’s a good one for supporting spooky stuff.

(And immediately afterward, Jerome uses it to explain several Scriptural quotes about God dwelling in darkness as well as light, and the majesty and terror of darkness and silence.)

(Translation mostly taken from a footnote in Cain’s translation of St Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians. It is in the CUA Press Fathers of the Church series.)

Second Sunday of Advent, Already?

The first reading today is the famous Isaiah “Comfort, comfort my people.” Interestingly, the command by God is in the plural – “Y’all comfort My people.”

It’s kind of a weird moment to be comforting. In chapter 39, King Hezekiah just showed off all his treasures to the ambassadors from Babylon, thus giving Babylon an incentive to come conquer and take the goodies. Isaiah had just warned Hezekiah of this, and the king had just said, “Whatever, just don’t let it come in my days.” Argh!

So at this point, God tells Isaiah to tell multiple people (presumably the other prophets) to comfort His people and to speak comfortingly to Jerusalem.

The interesting thing here is that there’s a hidden Messianic prophecy. “Speak”, dabberu, has the root “dabar” that means a lot of things, including “word.” The phrase “the Word of the Lord” is “dabar YHWH.”

So the implied prophecy is that the Word will speak “tenderly” to Jerusalem. Which is really something more like “speak to the heart”, dabberu al’ leb, to Jerusalem. Leb is both the heart and mind, so it also means to speak wisely as well as to speak tenderly. (The Septuagint Greek is “eis ten kardian,” which literally means “to the heart.”) So the musical setting with the lyrics “speak to the heart of Jerusalem” is not wrong.

The “service” that is at an end is Jerusalem’s hitch in the army. The word is literally the same as the normal word for an army, saba, where the plural is sabaoth.

There is a LOT of rhyming poetry and wordplay in this reading, in Hebrew. For example, “a voice crying out” is qowl qowre, which is really not something that comes across in translation. (The root word is qol, a voice or a sound.)

Our reading skips over the three verses where Isaiah is told to proclaim that all flesh is grass and will wither, because the Lord’s Spirit breathes upon it; and that the people are the grass. Yeah, that’s kind of a downer. But it ends with a proclamation that God’s Word (dabar Elohenu) will stand forever, which is more Messianic stuff.

Back to the portion in the reading.

Now we have Zion and Jerusalem, feminine figures, commanded to act as prophets or heralds of God’s coming. Which is kinda cool, because Daughter Zion and Daughter Jerusalem are cool as foreshadowing Mary and the Church, etc.

The Hebrew phrase is “lak ma bassaret,” you with good news. The Greek is a lot more familiar-looking – “euangelizomenos”. (Try saying that one three times.) In fact, it’s “ho euangelizomenos Zion,” and “ho euangelizomenos Ierousalem.” So that’s pretty clearly Messianic, yuppers.

All the stuff about the Lord coming in might and bringing stuff with Him? It all rhymes and such, all the way to the part about carrying lambs in His bosom. So that’s also fairly different from the translations.

The interesting bit is that… “like a shepherd” doesn’t seem to be in the Masoretic Hebrew? It just says something like “Shepherding His flock, He feeds them” and so on. It’s the Greek that says “Hos poimen, poimanei to poimnion”, which is “like a shepherd, He shepherds His flock” or “like a protector, He protects His flock.” (Fun wordplay!)

Btw, “leading the ewes with care” in the Hebrew is actually more like “leading the nursing ewes with care.” I mean, yes, they are ewes, but the point is that He is making sure that they don’t get stressed and stop giving milk. It’s possible that this includes dairy sheep, but it’s more likely that we’re talking about ewes with lambs that are still really young and unweaned (sincel the Shepherd is having to carry them in His arms). So keeping their nursing mothers able to nurse is really, really life or death.

The Greek changes that a bit to “en gastri,” talking about the ewes with young still held “in the belly.” So that’s kinda interesting.

It also says that the pregnant ewes are “parakalesei” by God. This is an interesting word, because it means basically “to call,” but in a coaxing or encouraging way. So it’s like God calling His ewes not just with “Here, sheepy sheepy!” but more like, “Come on, sheepy girl, you can do it!” or “This way, sheepy girl, here’s a nice path for you, and there’s good grass at the end.” (So one of the other meanings of “parakaleo” is “to console.,” and another one is “to ask beseechingly.”)

And it brings us back to the beginning of the reading, in fact, because the Greek there was “Parakaleite, parakaleite ton laon mou.” (“Y’all comfort, y’all comfort My people.”)

And that’s the end of the reading…. and right after that, Isaiah tells us that God is mysterious and infinite. So it’s a very interesting place to put all that prophetic Messianic poetry.

Given all the possible variant Hebrew readings that existed before the Masoretic vowels got put in, it might be that the Septuagint Greek is closer to the original version of the Hebrew. Either way, it’s good to look at this stuff, for fuller understanding of what God is trying to tell us.

Also, this reading is a reminder that fat-tail Middle Eastern sheep are currently in one of their lambing seasons (which goes from December to January), which is why the Gospel shepherds have the sheep down in the warmer low meadows full of winter grass close to towns like Bethlehem, and why the shepherds were out in the fields all night watching the sheep.

Do not be fooled on this point! European sheep that aren’t fat-tail breeds have a whole different seasonal cycle, but we’re not talking about them!

(Awassi sheep and other fat-tail breeds can have a second lambing season in March/April, or even year round if there’s good weather and fodder (unlike being outside in the wild). But that would be the ewes that haven’t lambed already being bred a second time.)

(Interestingly, Awassi male lambs can sire lambs themselves, at the age of seven to nine months! So shepherds separate the male lambs from the rest of the flock pretty early on, at five months’ age or so when they start “getting interested”, when they just got weaned at the age of three or four months. The lonely baby rams are apparently pretty easy to train, and will answer to their names, whereas the ewes and ewe lambs aren’t quite as interested in their human shepherds.)

(All shepherd dialogue is my artistic impression. Probably real shepherds do not say “sheepy girl,” but who knows?)