Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1108. Hebrew vowel points are the small dots and dashes printed above, below and inside the consonants of our printed Hebrew Bibles, and the question of when the Hebrew vowel points were added takes us into one of the more fascinating corners of textual history. If you have ever opened an interlinear Hebrew Old…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11046 Every Christian has heard it thousands of times. Prayers end with it, hymns close with it, and congregations say it together as naturally as breathing. But what does “Amen” actually mean, and why do we say it? The Meaning of the Word The word Amen (Hebrew: אָמֵן, ‘amen; Greek: ἀμήν, amēn) derives from…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 06070 The Old Testament does not use a single word for sin. It uses a rich vocabulary of overlapping terms that together paint a more complete picture of what sin actually is than any single word could capture. Three of those terms recur throughout the Hebrew Scriptures — and significantly, they appear together in…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6004 Scripture uses several different words to describe our moral failure before God, and each one sheds light on a different aspect of what we have done wrong. When David confessed his sin after his adultery with Bathsheba, he used all three major terms: “Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,…