“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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The Lockman Foundation Should be Ashamed
Several years ago, I wrote a book titled What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life. In it, I talked about things that prevent people from realizing their dreams and ambitions. At the top of the last are bad habits that people refuse to break.
Bad habits have consequences. For instance, if you eat too much, too often, and too late in the day, you will put on weight. If you do that long enough, you will join the ranks of the obese. In the book, I explained that a lot of people could get rich over time if they would control their appetites, eat out less often, and invest the money they save. I wasn’t joking. In the book, I presented evidence to prove it.
Some bad habits hurt only the people who have them and their close relatives. If you are a CPA and you have a bad habit of not paying attention to details, you put your clients at risk. That’s true for doctors and lawyers, too. Professional people have an obligation to keep abreast of the latest developments in their fields and to use that information for the benefit of their clients.
Preachers are professional people, too, or so they want us believe. They have obligations to their congregations including the obligation to present accurate information from the Bible. Very few of them do it.
The same is true for Bible translators. They have an obligation to translate the Bible as accurately as they can, but almost none of them do it. They know that they mistranslate crucial points in the Bible to adhere to fatally flawed Christian traditions. How they can sleep at night is a mystery to me. I feel the same way about preachers who know that they are promoting those traditions instead of the truth.
What are they thinking? I suppose they must believe that Yahweh is asleep at the switch or that He doesn’t care. Sometimes I wonder if they actually read the Bibles they preach from, or if they speed read through the Bible instead of taking time to think about what Yahweh said.
Yahweh cares a lot about the collective failure of Bible translators and preachers, and He isn’t taking an extended coffee break while people who are supposed to be feeding His children are trampling all over His word. This is a serious matter. Yahweh addressed this very problem many times in the Bible.
At the University of Virginia, we did our best to weed out the bad apples on the faculty. For the most part, we were successful. Yahweh knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff, too. He’s more merciful than we were, but His mercy has limits.
In Genesis 15, Yahweh made a covenant with Abraham and told him that He was giving the Promised Land to his descendants, but in Genesis 15: 16, Yahweh said that it would not happen for hundreds of years because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Well, the iniquity of Christian leaders is about complete. Prepare for some serious change.
The Lockman Foundation Should be Ashamed
A month ago yesterday, I wrote a SnyderTalk editorial about the NASB 2020 titled “NASB 2020: A Perfect Opportunity Wasted”. Since then, I have been reading it carefully, and I am beginning to realize that I was too diplomatic.
The Lockman Foundation waited for 25 years to publish the latest revision of the NASB, and they produced an atrocity. Two and a half decades is a long time. It’s more than enough time get things right. I think they should consider closing their doors permanently. If The Lockman Foundation and its translators were CPAs, doctors, or lawyers, they could be sued for malpractice. Thanks to the Lockman Foundation and intellectually lazy preachers, ordinary churchgoers who read the NASB are ignorant about critical issues that can affect their eternal destinies.
Do the so-called “Christian leaders” even care? I think the answer to that question has to be no, because if they cared, they would solve the problem. The fact that they continue to ignore it is proof that they are failing the people they are supposed to be serving, and they do it with smiles on their faces.
Take a few minutes are read Ezekiel 34. If you read that chapter and conclude that Yahweh doesn’t care, you should stop reading this editorial right now, because it won’t do you any good. Just say, “Praise Jesus,” and go on about your business. There is always next year’s Ishtar sermon to think about.
I don’t know anyone at The Lockman Foundation personally. I have no idea who its translators are, but they are supposed to be good at their profession. Regrettably, they are not. Ordinary Christians who read the NASB 2020 have every right to assume that the leaders at The Lockman Foundation did their utmost to assure the accuracy of the text, especially since the translators say in the foreword to the NASB that being true to the Scriptures in their original languages is a primary objective. Reading that statement made me cringe, since I know that they did not adhere to that principle.
Ordinary Bible readers don’t know that the NASB 2020 is loaded with glaring errors and that The Lockman Foundation and its translators know it at least as well as I do. They brush aside those errors and pretend that they did their job to the best of their ability.
A Case in Point: Jeremiah Chapter 2
The translators of the NASB 2020 introduce Jeremiah 2 with this subtitle: “Judah’s Apostasy”. Ordinary Christians reading the text and relying on that subtitle are being misled. It is not about “Judah’s apostasy”. It’s about Israel’s apostasy. That is perfectly clear from Jeremiah 2: 3:
“Israel was holy to the LORD, The first of His harvest. All who ate of it became guilty; Evil came upon them,” declares the LORD.’”
Ignoring the fact that Yahweh’s Name is not “the LORD”, a flagrant error that the translators committed 2 times in Jeremiah 2: 3, the NASB 2020 translators missed the point. Jeremiah 2 is about Israel primarily.
The difference between Israel and Judah is lost on most Christians. If you ask an average churchgoer to explain the difference, she will probably look at you like you are from another planet.
I think the same is true for most preachers. If they understand the difference, they do a good job of hiding it. For instance, I have heard many preachers say that Jews, the descendants of Judah, are Yahweh’s chosen people. That’s only partially true. The Children of Israel are Yahweh’s chosen people. Jews are a small percentage of that group. Most of the chosen people were scattered throughout the earth. They are the descendants of Jacob’s other sons.
Through Jeremiah, Yahweh was telling Judah that she was following in Israel’s footsteps, and by that time, Israel had been out of existence for about 200 years. Jeremiah’s warning was a stark reminder about what happens when Jacob’s descendants ignore Yahweh’s commands. Everybody in Judah knew what Jeremiah was saying, but NASB 2020 readers don’t. Judah isn’t mentioned specifically until Jeremiah 2: 28:
“But where are your gods Which you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you In the time of your trouble; For according to the number of your cities Are your gods, O Judah.” (Jeremiah 2: 28)
I may be naïve, but I don’t think a business professor should have to explain this crucial point to so-called “Bible scholars”, “linguists”, “Bible translators”, and “preachers”. The fact that I’m doing it and that I am right tells me that they are not what they claim to be or who they think they are.
Where are all the honest preachers? Why haven’t they made a fuss? Do they even care? Surely, some of them must? Why have they not raised their voices?
While it’s true that Jeremiah was a prophet to Judah, he did not begin his prophecy by talking about Judah. In chapter 2, he talked about Israel, and he singled out Judah one time to show that Judah had followed Israel’s lead into apostasy.
To ordinary Christians reading the NASB 2020, that may not sound like a significant point, but it is crucial. In fact, thanks to errors like this, most people reading the NASB 2020 do not understand the distinction between Israel and Judah at all, but they need to, especially now.
Simple Truths
Yahweh made His promises to Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob/Israel. Jacob had 12 sons. They are called “the Children of Israel”. Judah was one of those sons, not all 12 of them.
In the course of time, the Children of Israel went to Egypt where they were enslaved, but Yahweh delivered them from their bondage. He led them out of Egypt with signs and wonders that are still talked about and written about today. Moses was Yahweh’s designated leader. He was a Levite. He led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, not the Children of Judah alone.
After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Children of Israel entered the Promised Land. They were tribes, not a nation. They had no king. Instead, Yahweh gave them judges. Israel didn’t become a unified country until the Children of Israel demanded a king so that they could be like their neighbors.
Saul was Israel’s first king. He was a Benjaminite. Yahweh rejected him and made David King of Israel. David was a descendant of Judah, a Jew. David’s son Solomon followed him as King of Israel. After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king. That was in the mid-10th century BC.
All the tribes of Israel except Judah and Benjamin rejected Rehoboam as king. They split off and formed another country called “Israel”. It was also called “the Northern Kingdom”. Eventually it was called “Samaria”. Judah became a separate country, too. It was also called “the Southern Kingdom”.
Why is this important?
As I said, Jeremiah was a prophet to Judah, but his prophecy didn’t start with Judah. It started with Israel. That is perfectly clear in the original language, Hebrew.
This is of paramount importance, because Yahweh is about to reunite Israel and Judah. For details, read Ezekiel 34 and Ezekiel 37. We are on the cusp of change the likes of which the world has not seen since the Exodus, and the NASB 2020 fails to deliver Yahweh’s message accurately at this critical time.
People who read the NASB 2020 expecting to find the accurate word of Yahweh are like blind people being led by other blind people. As the Messiah said,
“Leave them alone. They are blind guides of blind people. And if a person who is blind guides another who is blind, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15: 14)
Shame on The Lockman Foundation. Shame of most Bible translators, Christian publishers, preachers, and others for rejecting the truth and promoting false and misleading Christian traditions masquerading as truth. Virtually all of them knowingly commit grievous errors, and they don’t give it a second thought. Those errors are important beyond their wildest dreams. If they understood Yahweh’s word and believed what He said, they would know that. In due course, they will know it, because Yahweh will tell them Himself.
By the way, the introduction to Jeremiah 2 should have been something like this: “Judah is Following Israel’s Apostasy”.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
