Psalm 119:96 – Ends

I have send the limits of all perfection,
but your command is very broad.

I have rarely seen as many different possible translations for a verse. Dahood (Anchor Bible Psalms) turns the words for “end” and “broad” into epithets for God. If I were to translate more loosely, I might, at this point suggest something like, “I have seen that everything in our world has a limit, but your commandment exceeds all of those.”

But my project has been to meditate on the verse, not resolve all language and translation issues. Of course, getting a sense of what the verse means is important to that. Who knew?

In fact, the verse may give a good example of the meaning I’m seeing in it. There’s an end to my ability to come up with a translation of which I can be certain!

I recall just after I had received my BA, with a major in biblical languages, I was traveling with my brother to where I would attend graduate school. I stopped for a church service in Yellowstone park near the visitor center at Old Faithful. Inevitably, as a bunch of travelers gather for church we exchanged information on why we were there and where we were going.

I told them what I had been studying and that I was traveling across country to go to graduate school in the same subject. Following the service a gentleman approached me to ask a question about the translation of a verse that had been bothering him. I talked to him for a bit and then my brother and I headed out walking around the geyser.

It suddenly hit me and I started laughing. “What?” my brother asked. “Do you realize I just talked to that guy for 10 minutes and I never gave him an answer to his question?” “Well, what was the answer?” “I actually have no idea!”

One of the problems of studying and learning is that you can forget along the way that there is an end to your knowledge. You can lose the ability to say, “I don’t know.” The best scholars I have known, and the best experts in any topic, are the ones who know their limits and can admit those limits.

This is true whether you’re a biblical scholar, an auto mechanic, a farmer, or anything else. It’s a wise person who knows what he or she has and has not mastered.

I think theology is one of the most tempting fields, because we want to be certain. We don’t want to be limited, and because there are so many things in theology that you can’t pin down like a lab result, we are often vastly more certain than our actual knowledge can justify.

Did this meditation really come from the verse I quoted and (mis?)translated? To the best of my knowledge, yes. But I have seen the end of the best of my knowledge. Or at least I hope I have!

Can you recognize your limitations? Can you still be joyful and fulfilled?

(Featured image credit:Orla. LIcensed from iStockPhoto.com)