Holy Adjectives...

So my new study has already proved to be very interesting.

I'm just a few days in to reading Exodus via several translations and I'm finding all sorts of interesting tidbits that I've missed before. A lot of it seems to be emphasis on certain words that you might just run past in certain translations.

(A great tool I've found to help find those emphasized words is the Discovery Bible. It's the NASB New Testament and it has markings to indicate, in it's words, "emphatic sense, which its Greek sentence implies.")

Today I want to talk to you about one of those instances.

In Exodus 3, I did my first read through in The Message and stopped when I came to verse 3:

Moses said, “What’s going on here? I can’t believe this! Amazing! Why doesn’t the bush burn up?”

I stopped because of the colloquial use of the word "Amazing". This is a word that gets thrown around alot in our culture.

My wife is AMAZING!

That song is AMAZING!

Those donuts were AMAZING!

That person just did something so incredible stupid that it is AMAZING!

And therefore I think it has maybe lost some of its power.

Upon comparing it to the ESV and the NET Bible...

(side note: The NET Bible is a very interesting translation. I don't often like the text itself, but it has the most incredible notes and great online study tools at net.bible.org. Check it out!)

...I found that the Hebrew word for which The Message interjected "Amazing" was actually defined as "great." and had the connotation of something extraordinary; that Moses anticipated something special was about to happen.

And I think we might too if we saw a burning bush that wasn't burning up and a voice was talking to us out of it.

But God is still "Amazing" and wants to do something special. And perhaps we miss that these days because we've taken adjectives that were meant for God and use them for sporting events and pizza.

So I want to challenge myself and all of you, let's start reclaiming those holy adjectives for what they were meant for - the praise of our Creator!

Tell me how it goes. God bless.