Many other examples could be brought forward to emphasize the close connection

between "heart" and "ways", but the foregoing will suffice.

To an English ear, the word "acknowledge" conveys the idea of "confession".

Another rendering that would perhaps be truer to the original would be "recognize". It is

a blessed thing to be sensitive to the presence and work of the Lord; to be able to

"recognize" Him in the dark as well as in the light; in the difficult path as well as in the

hour of triumph. When one is able thus to "recognize" Him the direction of our pathway

will follow as a matter of course.

It is interesting to know that the LXX version uses the word orthotomeo "rightly

divide", where the English version reads "direct". This is an important factor in the true

interpretation of II Tim. 2: 15 for the word would be immediately recognized by

Timothy as one with which his early training had made him familiar, and thus would

understand the practical necessity to follow the Divinely appointed finger-posts regarding

dispensational truth as the wayfarer and pilgrim would follow the directions placed for

his guidance at the fork of the road.

If acknowledgment of our sin is a necessary prelude to the "joy" and "experimental

knowledge" of sins forgiven, acknowledgment of the Lord in all our ways is assuredly as

necessary, if we would be "directed" in all our paths.

In the New Testament epiginosko and epignosis are translated both by the words

"knowledge" and "acknowledge". In early days the distinction between them was not so

sharply drawn as now. For example, the majestic words:

was the recognized form in the year 1535A.D. To-day "knowledge" stands, in the first

instance, for the "stuff" of knowledge, the information gathered, or the intelligence

possessed. This however is the secondary meaning of the word, and even to-day a

first-class dictionary places the primary meaning of "knowledge" as: "Acknowledgment,

confession;  recognition of the position of claims of any one" (Oxford English

Epignosis is the combination of epi, "on", and gnosis, "knowledge", but it must not be

assumed that the addition of epi indicates merely the piling up of knowledge upon

knowledge: few, if any, occurrences of the word would justify this usage.

When Hosea says:

mere formal knowledge, historical knowledge, grammatical knowledge, is not intended.

There is implicit in the word the idea of acknowledgment or recognition. If we could

divest the word "recognition" of its secondary meaning (that of "recognizing" a person