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Part One: |
Part Two: |
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CONDESCENSION |
OMISSION |
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Greek:
Anthropopatheia |
Greek:
Ellipsis |
Note: This teaching was originally in the Advanced
category, but now we have a Figures of Speech category so I moved it. It allows you to get a more detailed and
advanced understanding of both of these Figures combined into one
teaching. It appears complicated in some
sections and may challenge you. You
should read it more than once.
Part One:
CONSESCENSION
This
is a figure of speech that is used quite often throughout the Bible. The Latin name, which is what we will be
calling this Figure in this teaching, is Condescensio.
To
completely understand the meaning of this figure of speech, first we’ll use
this definition: "The Ascribing of
Human Attributes, etc. to God." To
get into more detail about this figure, it can also be described as the
ascription of human passions, actions, or attributes to God. Hence the English version of the figure is
condescension. God, by using this figure
condescends to the level of man. I do
not believe that God condescends to the level of man because He feels that man
is ignorant or infirm. He condescends to
man so that man will be able to easily understand God's purpose and wisdom.
We need to understand one
very major point to understand Condescensio.
God is Spirit, so He does not have arms, He does not have legs, He does
not have any of the attributes that man has because He is Spirit. You cannot see, taste, smell, or touch God. The Holy Spirit is invisible and does not
have a body of any sort. So again, as
you must remember and never forget, God marks important points in His Bible by
using figures of speech. A figure of
speech used in the Bible makes you stop and think about the verse. Let's use a very simple example before we get
into actual examples from the Bible. If
God said to you, I will protect you with my arm and no harm shall come to you. We'll, God is Spirit and He does not have an
arm. He’s using a figure to comfort
you. Could it be any simpler than
this? You need to understand the basics
of what I am trying to teach you here or you will never understand any of the
teachings regarding figures of speech. I
have no doubt in my heart that you will be able to easily understand the
meaning and purpose and importance of these figures of speech that are used
throughout the Bible. The last statistic
that I remember about figures is that there are about 212 figures of speech and
possibly 40 varieties of each one. So we
have our work cut out for us. One at a
time.
To give you an example of
how many varieties of one figure of speech that there are, we’ll use
condescensio as our first example. This
figure of speech can be used to represent:
1. Human and rational beings such as parts and members of man. The figure can represent the feelings of man
or the actions of man or of the different circumstances surrounding man. 2. It
can be used to represent other parts of God’s creation such as animals or
plants. 3. It can be used in reference to inanimate
things such as the elements or the earth.
God
can appear to represent any of these examples, however, He is Spirit and cannot
literally represent any of the
above examples. But He will make use of
the figure of speech Condescensio so that He can get His point across to a
believer in a way that that believer can easily and clearly understand
Him. Let’s try to find some simple
examples from the Bible to begin with.
Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. – Psalm 89: 15
The word ‘countenance’ often is interpreted in
Biblical texts as ‘FACE’. Can you see
the importance of such a verse? Those
who know the joyful sound and walk by the Word of God, they will walk in the
light of God’s face. Even if you were to
use the word ‘countenance’, God is Spirit and does not have a countenance. The word ‘face’ seems to have more
impact. The Figure is emphasizing the
fact that the believers will walk in the light of God’s presence enjoying His
favor and blessing. That’s what the Word
says and that’s what it means.
By
the way, the word ‘face’ is used in place of presence in Psalm 17: 2, 31: 20
and others. The New English Bible has
even contributed its own figure of speech in verse 17: 2.
Let judgement in my cause issue from thy lips, let thine eyes be fixed on justice. --Psalm 17: 2 [New English Bible]
How
can judgement issue from God’s lips?!!
God has no lips. Obviously, you
know the answer.
This is obviously the Figure of
Speech condescensio. It should grab your
attention and make you stop and think.
This figure is very easy to
understand. That’s why I chose it as our
first example. Let’s go through a few
more examples from the New Testament.
Condescensio
can be used in reference to inanimate things as we mentioned previously, such
as the elements.
And the light of Israel shall be
for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame:
and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; --
Isaiah 10: 17
God is spoken of as fire. The smoke of God’s fire denotes His
anger. You see God condescends to our
level so that we get a vivid illustration of what He is teaching us – one that
we can understand. That is one of the
purposes of the Figure of Speech. As we
already covered, the Figure is the Holy Spirit’s markings as to what is
important in His Word. This is a whole
different world as far as studying God’s Word is concerned. These teachings are in the Intermediate to
Advanced level and will get rid of the unbelievers and unbelieving
believers. Only the strong believers
will stay with the teachings. I often
wondered what happened to the school teacher that tried to tear apart the
teaching on alcoholism and wrote to me with insults. I figured it out. She was an alcoholic. Satan is the originator of trickery. Don’t let him get to you. He is defeated and having constant panic
attacks about the return of Jesus Christ.
God
is also referred to as having to do with place and time as men do.
But I say unto you, Swear not at
all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: --
Matthew 5: 34
This is referring to God sitting on a
throne. I picked this example because you
may not have recognized this verse as having the Figure of Speech
Condescensio. But stop and think. God doesn’t sit down so He doesn’t need a
throne, neither can He use one. If you
look at the context, it mentions swearing.
If you’ve studied James, you will know that we are never to swear or
make an oath, lest we make a fool out of ourselves. Can people swear by the heavens? Sure they can. But God says not to do that because He is the
number one power in the universe and over all of creation. Satan has temporary power and he knows
it. God is comforting us in the verse by
assuring us that He is watching over and protecting us because the heavens are
His throne (He is the one with the ultimate power over everything.) He only asks us to obey and apply His Word
which is perfect guidance – a perfect blueprint for living the more than
abundant life.
Part Two:
OMISSION
Figures
involving Omission are so-called because some gap is left in the sentence –
in this case, in the Scripture.
Leave it up to God to incorporate such an unusual figure, but it makes
us stop and gets our attention. A more
clearer definition or explanation is that a word or words are left out or
omitted. Are you getting the gist of
this thing? Maybe not, but you will when
we study some Scriptures that have Figures of Omission. I don’t want to tell you how many variations
there are of this Figure, so let’s begin with a simple category: Affecting Words. That’s our overall category.
Let
me go over this point. The figure of
Omission is a peculiar form given to a passage [now get this]
when a word or words are
omitted; words which are necessary for the grammar, but are not necessary for
the sense. Just remember what I
said in the blue color and the following examples will begin to open up to
you. Trust me. When you study an area somewhat advanced, you
are digging deeper in the Word for the really valuable treasures!
I
thought we were ready to go, but not quite.
I must mention that there are 3 kinds of Omission or Ellipsis:
Relative Ellipsis
Absolute
is where the omitted word or words are to be
supplied from the nature of the subject alone.
Relative
is where the omitted word or words are to be
supplied from, and are suggested by the context.
The
Ellipsis of Repetition, is where the omitted word or words are to be
supplied by repeating them from a clause which precedes or follows.
The
following figure of Omission falls in a specific category called ‘The Omission
of Nouns and Pronouns’. In this case we are
dealing with the Omission of the NOMINATIVE.
[The nominative case is one of the grammatical
cases of a noun
or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject
of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as
opposed to its object or other verb
arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the
nominative, and the nominative is the dictionary form of the noun. [Try to stay with the last sentence which is
easy to understand.] The following is an
ABSOLUTE ELLIPSIS. Bullinger abbreviates
many verses in order to get his point across quickly and emphatically. The following exemplifies this.
--
Melchizedek said to Abram ”Blessed be the most high God which hath
delievered thine enemies into thine hand.
And he (i.e., Abram) gave him tithes of all.” --
Genesis 14: 19, 20 condensed according to E. W. Bullinger for the sake of
brevity.
The fact that God
left out Abram’s name is a Figure of Omission hopefully assuring you that these
Figures are not so difficult, after all.
This
verse can easily be wrongly divided if you believe the tithes were given by
Melchizedek to Abram. However, it was
Abram who gave the tithes to Melchizedek which can be seen from the context of
the verse or the nature of the subject alone.
That is the definition of an Absolute Ellipsis.
Let’s
also go to the King James Version and not to Bullinger’s abbreviated verses to
make it even clearer that it was Abram who gave the tithes to Melchizadek.
Now
consider how great this man [priest] was, unto whom even the patriarch
Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils. – Hebrews 7: 4
Now
read Hebrews 7: 1 (context, remember?) and you will clearly see that the
context is talking about Melchizadek, the priest of the most high God. Verses 1 – 4 gives you proof beyond a shadow
of doubt of our conclusion. Do you see
how the Word of God interprets itself?
That’s why we should never guess at what the Word says. That’s private interpretation (idios – one’s
own).
Knowing
this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private
interpretation. – II Peter 1: 20
The
word ‘private’ in the Greek is the word ‘idios’ and it means ‘one’s own’. We’ve gotten the English word ‘idiot’ from
that derivative.
The
question resounds: Why didn’t God put
Abram’s name in verse 20 of Genesis?
Because he wanted us to stop and think and get our attention. He wanted us to work the verse and in turn,
rightly divide His Word. We did work it,
didn’t we? And we have the correct
understanding of the subject matter of the verse. To me, it’s exciting. Figures make you work the Word and the surprising truth we
uncover is comforting and rewarding.
Let
us move on to our next Figure of Omission and to one maybe a little more
simpler than our first one – maybe.
I
would like to make you aware that all of these figures are not exactly easy to
understand. This category of teachings,
again, falls in the Intermediate to Advanced categories. If you like to work the Word and study it
deeply for the greatest treasures, you will enjoy these teachings. If you are having a difficult time
understanding these figures of speech, perhaps you should turn to the many other
categories and teachings covered in this website. These teachings are not made for everyone,
but only for the really dedicated believer who likes to search out the
treasures in the Word. I am making every
effort to present this teaching so that you can understand it. You may have to read it more than one
time. So let us now go to a Scripture in
Psalms that contains the figure Omission and is not difficult to understand by
any means. In fact, it's a good example
of seeing something that is missing in the verse and that makes it difficult to
completely understand what the verse is saying.
So let's go to that verse.
He
that chastiteth the heathen, shall not he correct you among the heathen?
he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not
he know? -- Psalm 94: 10
Now
look at the phrase in the first part of the verse, which is where the verse
stops, that says ‘shall not he correct?’
Doesn't this seem like an incompletion of the sense? If you were to read this sentence by itself,
isn't there room for some confusion? Are
we sure that the pronoun He is referring to the lower case he? The completion of the sense is not evident unless
we supply the omission. That
omission in this case, repeated again, should read as follows and as seen above
in the verse: “He that chastiteth the
heathen, shall not he correct you among the heathen? “ Now the sense of the verse is
completed. We now know that the
correction is referring to you among or apart from the heathen. Notice how the second part of the verse backs
up the Omission and strengthens the first part of the verse where we supplied
the Omission.
As I said before, some of these Figures of Speech
are difficult to recognize. But when we come
across a Scripture that doesn't seem right such as the one above, we may stop
and think as that Scripture captures our attention. Most of the time, this type of Scripture
contains a Figure of Speech. Let’s move
on to a different Scripture, perhaps our final example in the Omission
category. The above examples should
present you with enough instruction on Figures so as not to confuse you, but to
whet your interest to study and learn even more. Let’s move on.
I am going to conclude this Part Two and the entire
teaching with a verse(s) where there is an obvious Omission and a rather simple
one. Without understanding this
Omission, I wrongly divided this one verse for many years. Figures of Speech is not a science, but can be
difficult – but always exciting and interesting and very worthwhile to learn.
We are going to the New Testament to Ephesians, one
of the Church Epistles written to the Church of the Body of Christ – us. I’m going to first quote 3: 17 mainly because
the context gives us what the “missing word”
in verse 18 should be, however it is rather easy to overlook as I did
for many years.
That Christ may dwell [saturate]
in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, --
Ephesians 3: 17
May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the
breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
-- Ephesians 3: 18
Can you see the Omission in verse 18? My point is the breadth of what?!………. the
length, depth, and height of WHAT? If
you don’t see the Figure of Omission in verse 18, you can easily be confused
and wrongly divide the Word of God. For
years, I thought verse 18 was referring to being ‘spiritually sharp’. Sounds good, doesn’t it?????? WRONG. It’s
so simple, to this day, it kind of gets on my nerves a bit. Now I am going to give you a literal
translation of Ephesians 3: 17, 18.
Before that I am going to review for you How The Bible Interprets
Itself. Do you remember the
teaching? The Bible interprets itself in
3 ways: 1) Right in the verse 2) In the context 3) Where it was used before. Keep that in mind. Now we will learn exactly what breadth,
length, depth, and height is referring to by supplying the Omission.
Literal translation of Ephesians 3: 17, 18:
That Christ may dwell [saturate] in your hearts by
faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May know what is the breadth
[of it] , and the length [of it] , and the depth [of it] , and the height [of it] ;
If you look at the context of the two verses and
the Omission which is clearly [of it] used three times, it now becomes clear
that breadth, length, depth, and height is referring simply to LOVE. Love is possessive of our four (4) descriptive nouns used
in verse 18. This is all stemming from
the last word at the very end of verse 17.
It’s the word LOVE. Context,
context, context. It was right there in
front of me and I missed it for years.
Thank God it’s not a sin to make a mistake – it’s a sin to be afraid to
make a mistake.
When I studied Figures of Speech Used In The
Bible by Bullinger, this allowed me to rightly divide Ephesians 3: 18 for
the first time. And that’s important.
_________________________
I hope you enjoyed this teaching and I know one
thing – it made you think. On a long
mountain walk, I belive God put a subject on my heart that is really going to
bless and set free many believers. It’s
simple, but it’s a principle that will do wonders for your walk with God and
for your more than abundant life.
Guaranteed.
So study these Figures of Speech. We will come back to them. God bless.
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