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Luke 12: 50. "But I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be
accomplished." (Until the Lord was crucified and raised again from the
dead, He was "straitened," "confined," His ministry was confined to
Israel, He said "Tell no man until after the resurrection).
Every passage demands the plain meaning "to hold fast," "to keep in," "to stop."
Following the words, "I am in a strait," the A.V. reads "betwixt two." The word
betwixt is the rendering of the preposition ek. If betwixt does not accord with the
meaning of ek, to have rendered sunechomai ek "to press out," certainly conflicts with
the constant meaning "to keep in," "to throng," "to hold fast." It is easy to demonstrate
how false or meaningless the translation "betwixt" may become in some passages--that
however does not settle the meaning of Phil. 1: 23; it only settles the meaning in a
negative way for those particular passages. John 3: 25 says, "there arose a question
between (ek) some of John's disciples and the Jews." Now while this is the only passage
where ek is translated "between" in the A.V. and while it would be easy to show how
absurd is such a rendering as "the resurrection between the dead," or to say how could we
be "absent between the body?" yet that would only prove that ek was capable of bearing
more than one meaning, and would by no means prove that "between" did not convey
the sense of the original of John 3: 25.
The average reader who may have been led to think that "out of" is the only
unquestioned rendering of ek, may feel a trifle surprised to hear that while in the great
majority of cases "out of" is the best rendering, that it also is rendered "by means of"
once, "through" twice, "with" twenty-five times, "by" fifty-five times, "by reason of"
three times, "because of" three times, or eighty-nine times in all.
Take the rendering "with."
Matt. 27: 7. "They brought with them the potter's field."
Mark 12: 30. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength."
John 4: 6. "Wearied with His journey."
John 12: 3. "Filled with the odour."
Rev. 17: 2-6. "Drunk with the wine . . . . . with the blood o the saints."
It would be quite easy to insert "with" in some passages where it would be absurd, but
that would not prove the above passages to be wrongly translated. Again, look at the
passages where ek is rendered "by."
Matt. 12: 33. "The tree is known by his fruit."
Matt. 12: 37. "By thy words thou shalt be justified."
Acts 19: 25. "By this craft."
Rom. 2: 27. "Uncircumcision which is by nature."
Titus 3: 5. "Not by works of righteousness."
I John 3: 24. "By the Spirit."
Rev. 9: 18. "By the fire . . . . . which issueth out of their mouths." (Here in Rev. 9: 18
ek is rendered "by" and "out of" in the one verse).