intended to meet the difficulty. Dr. Driver has however (Tenses, ed. 2, pp. 285, 286) well shown its improbability from a grammatical point of view. No Hebrew reader would have understood the phrase thus. Is it not a case for critical conjecture? The context suggests the idea that the king's success is assured, because God has established his throne, and because he loves righteousness (see v. 7). Bickell therefore, improving upon Olshausen, reads:

"As for thy throne, [firm is its foundation,]

God [hath established it] for ever and ever."

xlv. 13. The king's daughter within (the palace) is all glorious. The A.V., as one knows but too well, is constantly misinterpreted. "Within" means not "inwardly," as opposed to "outwardly," as if the poet meant "her greatest charms are those which do not strike the eye" (so even Herder); but "in the inner part of the palace" (i.e. in the women's apartments), as the margin more clearly puts it.

xlix. 5, 14. I content myself with indicating the corrections which go far to restore sense to this fine but here and there obscure psalm.

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lviii. 1. "As otherwise read " means as otherwise pronounced." The letters of the text may be pronounced 'ēlim, as the marginal renderings imply that they should be (see on xxix. 1). It is well that two margins were accorded; for the first margin, though doubtless correct, much requires a commentary. The strange interpretation of the letters of the text embodied in the vowel points ('elem, i.e. in silence), was probably invented to avoid the rendering "ye gods," the key to which had been lost. Indeed, the word 'elem was itself probably a new coinage.

Iviii. 9. The green and the burning alike. The insertion of "wood" in italics would have made this clearer, and would have counterbalanced the insertion of "flesh" in the marg. rendering.

T. K. CHEYNE.

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"FAITHFUL IS THE WORD."

FIVE passages in the Pastoral Epistles repeat with slight variations the sentence," This is a faithful saying” (1 Tim. i. 15, iii. 1, iv. 9, 2 Tim. ii. 11; Tit. iii. 8). The Greek text is identical in all. Our English Bible disguises this recurrence in 1 Timothy iii. 1, by substituting the adjective true for faithful. The motive for this alteration is obvious if the translators were right in regarding it as a mere preface to the next sentence, the change would be almost a necessity. But this interpretation is highly improbable: for it assumes that the subsequent words, "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work," existed already as a current saying in the Church, and that St. Paul did no more than endorse their truth; whereas they are more naturally read, apart from the preface, as the apostle's own independent assertion of a bishop's responsibility. Nor does the original at all justify the introduction of this idea of truth into the text. The Revised Version has, with its usual fidelity to the Greek, restored the word faithful, and emphasised it by placing it at the beginning of the sentence. But this restoration of the true text forces us to seek a fresh interpretation for its meaning; for the subsequent assertion, though true, cannot be designated as a faithful saying.

The same perplexity confronts the reader in the later passages in which the words recur. Our English versions again attempt to interpret them as an emphatic preface to a subsequent clause, in spite of the connecting particle "for"; which indicates, both in 1 Timothy iv. 10 and in 2 Timothy ii. 11, that the next clause is not an essential part of the previous sentence, but contains additional arguments in support of the former teaching. Nor can that interpretation otherwise satisfy an intelligent reader. For in 1 Timothy iv. 10 there follows a vivid picture of a devoted life animated

by trust in a living Saviour; in 2 Timothy ii. 11-13, a series of solemn warnings that our participation in Christ's future glory is conditional on our present participation in His death and sufferings, and on our present fidelity to Him; in Titus iii. 8, an exhortation to the preacher to be diligent in enforcing Christian duties on his flock. It would be a misuse of language to designated each of these successively as a faithful saying: all alike bear the stamp of original argument or exhortation emanating directly from the mind. of St. Paul.

An earlier passage (1 Tim. i. 15) throws considerable light on the meaning of the word "faithful": for in describing the revelation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners as faithful, the apostle evidently means that it was an assurance on which the penitent sinner could rely; it contained a pledge on God's part to man's salvation, most worthy of acceptance. But the same difficulty again presents itself as to the word "saying"; for St. Paul was not there quoting any previous saying of Christ or His apostles, but was himself embodying in new language, and expressing with apostolic authority and power, the central mercy of Divine redemption.

A glance at the original furnishes the key to this enigma; we perceive that our English versions have given a false colour to the sentence by rendering the original "logos (the Word) as "a saying," and that the first step to understanding St. Paul's meaning is to remove this arbitrary gloss of our English translators. The deep meaning with which that Greek term was invested in the Alexandrine and Christian theology of the first century is well known; the opening of St. John's Gospel presents "the Word" in mystic grandeur as a Divine personality, the living voice of God embodied in the person of the Lord Jesus, when He dwelt visibly among men. Elsewhere it was the common word by which any ordinary speech of men or any written

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language of Scripture was described. It ranges, in fact, from the simplest to the deepest thoughts of theological language, and it is the province of criticism to determine everywhere its true rendering. In more than thirty passages of the New Testament the Authorized Version has employed saying" as its English equivalent, always with reference to some definite spoken language, or some distinct passage of Scripture. The Revised Version has done well to displace it from many passages of St. John's Gospel, notably from viii. 51, 52, 55; for in the conversation there recorded, Christ referred evidently not to any particular saying, but to the importance of keeping His own and His Father's Word. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand why it is banished from John xii. 38 and Romans xiii. 9, where definite words of Esaias, of Moses, and of Christ are quoted, seeing that it is retained in the case of other quotations. But our present concern is with one particular sentence of St. Paul. 66 Faithful is the Word," whose life and power have suffered fatally by mistranslation. Five times he repeated this one emphatic sentence, as if to print it indelibly on the memory of the Church. On the first occasion he added a definition of the Word by way of explanation (1 Tim. i. 15): it was "the Word, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Now this definition does not point to any single message of grace and mercy elsewhere recorded, but to the Gospel as a whole. It thus furnishes a key to St. Paul's conception of the Word, as the entire revelation of the Father's love manifested in the incarnation. The Gospel was not then embodied in the canon of Scripture, nor had it yet taken shape as a formal system of doctrine.' The Word which presented itself to the mind of St. Paul was the preached Word, of

1 The notion of a formal creed or confession of faith is not conveyed by the original of 2 Timothy i. 13, which suggests a mere outline whose details are to be filled up hereafter.

which he had been made a minister, and which he now committed to his disciples to be treasured as a sacred deposit and transmitted pure and unalloyed to the future Church. This idea of the Word differs fundamentally from St. John's, for he nowhere ascribes to it a distinct personality or identifies it with the person of Christ. But there is this much in common in the two ideas, that St. Paul here regards the Word in its unity as a whole, ascribes to it a spiritual life of its own, and asserts for it the definite quality of faithfulness. Just as the Epistle to the Hebrews figuratively describes the Word of God as living and active (iv. 12), so St. Paul here contemplates it as endued with a spiritual character corresponding to the character of the God whose will it expressed. His description of God's Word as faithful answers to his description of God Himself as faithful because He will not suffer His people to be tempted above that they are able: he claims thereby for the Word that it is a sure foundation on which the penitent can build, a rock that cannot be shaken, and an immovable anchor of the soul.

Now then let us try to grasp the full meaning of this repeated utterance, Faithful is the Word. It is an ejaculation which came straight from the heart of St. Paul, as he dictated his latest words of counsel to his children in the faith. The very nature of such a sentence forbade any direct connexion with the immediate context; these abrupt outbursts of strong feeling are of necessity more or less isolated: the key to its meaning must be sought therefore below the surface in the mind of the writer, and the sentiment pervading the whole epistle, rather than in any particular words or phrases. Now the tone of the Pastoral Epistles differed from his earlier, as did the circumstances of the writer and of those whom he addressed. His personal labours for Christ were drawing to a close; his active life of missionary enterprise had ceased, perhaps for ever; and