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foreign language, to stammer, hence to mock, and only in a derived and secondary sense
does it mean an interpreter.
However strange the transition of thought may be from mocking, stammering, to
interpreting, we have here for the first time in the many words used in Scripture, one that
does bear upon our present quest. The interpreter, among other things, deals with a
foreign language--in the case of the Scriptures, Hebrew and Greek--and he must possess
two qualifications:
(1)
of apprehending the meaning of the original Scriptures, and
(2)
of making that meaning intelligible to others.
This second feature is another item that we shall have to deal with at large later. A
word that comes nearer to the sense of interpretation that is intended in this series is
found in Ezra 4: 7:
"And the writing of the letter was written in the Syrian tongue, and interpreted in the
Syrian tongue."
There appears to be something strange about this statement, for a letter written in
Syrian could not be interpreted in Syrian--there would be no need for such interpretation.
The R.V. reads:
"Was written in the Syrian character, and set forth in the Syrian tongue."
This gives the true meaning of the passage. For a letter might have been written in the
Syrian tongue but in the letters of another language.
"The Chaldee and Syrian tongue was once all one, as appeareth in Gen. 31: 47;
Ezra 4: 7; Dan. 2: 4. In character indeed they differed; they of Babylon, using one
kind of letter; they, of Syria, another: this was that that nonplussed the Babylonian
wizards about the writing of the wall, so that they could not read it, though it were in their
own language, because it was not in their own letters" (Lightfoot).
This, however, is by the way. Our chief concern is the word translated "interpret"
here, the Hebrew targem. This word is familiar to Bible Students under the form
"Targum", for it is used to indicate the Chaldee paraphrase of the O.T. It lives on today
in the word "Dragoman", the ordinary guide and interpreter of the East, and who, though
he exhibits some faults that the true interpreter must avoid, ideally is a good picture of the
Scriptural interpreter. We learn from the scrupulous care of the enemies of the Jews a
lesson that every interpreter of Holy Writ should have at heart, namely, to consider
nothing too trifling that will ensure the plainest possible presentation of the message to be
given.
While the mere appearance of the printed page is secondary to the matter (and for the
sake of the truth contained therein we have plodded through some very badly printed
pages at times), yet a reasonable attention to paragraphs, and the separation of quotations