HEBREW WORD STUDY – I WILL LOVE YOU, O LORD – ‘ERECHEKA YHWH  רחמכ יהוה  

Psalms 18:1: “To the chief Musician, [A Psalm] of David, the servant of the LORD, who spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day [that] the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul: And he said, ‘I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.’”

The above verse was quoted from the King James Version.  Every modern translation I have looked at renders; “I love you, O LORD, my strength.”  Only the King James Version renders it in a future tense, “I will love you.”  All modern translations render it in the present tense as “I love you, O Lord.”

Why does the King James Version put this into a future tense?  Well, one reason is that grammatically it is in an imperfect form.  Imperfect means the verb, which is love, in this case, is an uncompleted action. An uncompleted action would be either in a present or future tense.  Generally, a verb that is in an imperfect form is rendered as a future and a participle is rendered as a present. So the King James Version is not wrong grammatically to put this into a future tense.  But that does not mean all modern translations are wrong to put this into a present tense either. Here is the point, there are no tense in Hebrew. Everything is either a completed or uncompleted action, perfect or imperfect.  Logically a completed action would be rendered in the past tense in English and an uncompleted action would be rendered as a future tense in English.  If a word is a participle ending in ing well, in English that is obviously a present tense.  But we are talking Hebrew here, not English.  Just because something is in an imperfect form does not mean you automatically put it in a future tense.  It is perfectly acceptable to put an imperfect verb into a present tense and even a past tense if the context calls for it.

So why is this important?  To render this as: “I will love thee, O LORD…” would suggest that David did not love God in the past and even in the present but that one day he would eventually love God.   As this is a short version of my study I will not quote all the Scriptures but I am sure you will agree there are plenty of Scriptures to show David loved God in the past, present and future.

There is a group called the King James Only who insists that there is only one correct version of the Bible and that is the KJV.   They will point to a verse such as this one and say: “Lookie here, all the modern versions have changed the Bible.”  Fact is, it is not changed, both are grammatically correct, David will love God but he also loves God at that moment.  Translating it as a present tense in English implies the future tense as well-fitting nicely into the grammatical understanding of an imperfect form as well as not contradicting passages where David expresses a love for God before the event leading up to this Psalm.

So why did the translators of the KJV choose to put this in a future tense?  In 1611 the KJV was commissioned by the Church of England. Hence, the translation followed the teachings of the Church of England and the Church of England taught against a personal relationship with God and that God did not love everyone equally. Only those lucky enough to be chosen to go to heaven will then love God in heaven, hence David said he will love God, but not at the present moment.

George Whitfield, an ordained minister of the Church of England opposed this view.  He wanted to open the church up to the scumbags, the poor, the needy.  At that time the church only served the rich, the cultured, and the educated.  It was believed that God did not love these low life people.  When George Whitfield graduated from Oxford in 1732, about 120 years after the publication of the KJV he was refused a pulpit in English because he promised to bring, omg, people right off the streets into the church, and that God wanted to save these people as well.  So George Whitfield, rather than comprise the revelation he believed to be from God, went to America where he preached to the common man and the Indians and started a modern-day Evangelical movement as well as ushering in the Great Awakening, where everyone who desired could be saved,  you did not have to belong to a certain class of people or family, God loves everyone.

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