Thursday, January 9, 2020

Paul Hoskisson on "strait and narrow" in the Old Testament



Indeed, he draws you away from the brink of distress to a broad (‎צַר) place where there is no constraint (מוּצָק); your table is laid out with rich food. (Job 36:16 | 1985 JPS Tanakh)

Commenting on “strait and narrow” in the Hebrew Bible, Paul Y. Hoskisson wrote that the OT

does contain an analogous, synonymous word pair to strait and narrow. But, as far as I can determine, it does not contain an analog to straight and narrow. The Hebrew word pair tswr/tsrr and tswq mean, respectively, “distress(ed), strait(en)(ed), narrow, slim, constrain(ed),” etc. and “siege, constrict; strait(en)(ed), constrain(ed), narrow,” etc. For example, these two word roots stand behind the King James translation of Job 36:16 (with the corresponding English words in italics), “Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait (tsār) into a broad place, where there is no straitness (mūtsāq).” (Other examples follow below in which these two roots are used in even more narrowly parallel structures.) In every instance that I could find in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament where this word pair occurs, no matter what form the roots take, tswr/tsrr always comes before tswq, just as strait in English nearly always comes before narrow when the two are bound in the same phrase. (Straightening Things Out: The Use of Strait and Straight in the Book of Mormon, pp. 63-64)