​Hebrew Word Study – Froward – Patal – פתל  Pei, Taw Lamed

Psalms 18:26 “With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.”

This is again one of those verses where translators are forced to paraphrase.  I heard a linguist once say that every Bible translation is at a best a paraphrase.  A paraphrase is an attempt to restate a matter for clarification.  When that happens you run into a lot of opinions. Not that the opinions are wrong but the particular words chosen by the one paraphrasing may not mean the same thing to you as it does to the one doing the paraphrasing.  We talk about playing with semantics. I hear this often when there is a discussion about certain words in the Bible and eventually someone will scoff and say: “Enough of this playing around with semantics, it says what it means.”  What the person is saying is that semantics are not important, you get nowhere discussing it.  But semantics means the study of meaning. It is very important to discuss the meaning of a word because a word can have a different meaning for different people and we need to know what the word meant to the people to whom it was written.  Semantics is the study of linguistical development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.

Note Psalms 18:26: “With the pure, God will show Himself pure.”   That is easily understood and acceptable. We may have various levels of understanding as to what pure really means but ultimately discussing the various meanings of pure is just an exercise in semantics and I would agree with the scoffer,  whatever meaning we attach to pure, it comes out pretty much the same, God will deal well with those who are good.

But this next one could affect our whole world view of God.  For one thing, the KJV uses the word forward, which is an old English word rarely used today and most of us do not know what it means.  Webster defines it as willfully contrary.   So those who are willfully contrary to God, God will be willfully contrary to them.   Oh my, that sounds more like “Do unto others before they do unto you,”  rather than “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Yet, the Hebrew text uses two different words.  “Those who are iqqesh to God, God will be thitephathal to them.” We have two different words which according to the KJV are synonymous to each other, except there are no synonyms in Hebrew. If two words have similar meanings in Hebrew their meanings are only similar but not exactly the same.  There is some difference in the nuance. 

With the word iqqesh almost every different translation tends to say different things.  The modern English translations I looked at all used a different English word for iqqesh or how someone bad relates to God.  The English words I found for iggesh or froward were devious, wicked, crooked, froward, morally corrupt, deceptive, perverse, and fraudulent.  The problem here is that each word does have a little different meaning and nuance. Which translation really reflects what God intended? Maybe they all do?  That is my opinion on the matter.  

Let’s look at iqqesh in your BDB lexicon. It will tell you it means twisted, distorted, crooked perverse or perverted.  Only distorted and twisted are not on the original list of what I found in translations, so I can assume that modern translators had their reasons for rejecting twisted or distorted.   The list keeps growing. Let’s add to that list with the Davidson Lexicon and you can add to pervert, be false, and have crooked ways. Rabbi Samson Hirsch will add the words oppose, distort, and contort.  Now from this list you must decide on only one word to put into your translation, how do you decide?  To paraphrase a Real Estate agent, context, context, context. 

If man is iqqest to God, God will be thitephathal to them.  This word thitephathal comes from the root word pathal.  The renderings used by our modern translations create a list just as long as  it did for iqqesh.  The modern translation I looked at all used a different word, shrewd, hostile, tortuous, astute, froward, perverse, subtle, perverted, contrary, contentious, and wrestle.   We can add to that the words given by the BDB lexicon which are twist, unsavory, entwine and struggle. 

Norah Jones sang a romantic song where she sang something very romantic and poetic, “My heart is drenched in wine.”  But what does that mean? If you were translating this into another language for someone and you wanted to express its true meaning would you say: “My heart is drunk or intoxicated?”  Maybe you would say your heart was filled with pleasure, joy, or sophistication.   If you decided against paraphrasing and wanted to leave it up to the reader you might translate it as: “My heart is drenched in fermented grape juice.”   Then you could let the reader put it into their own emotional context. Note how some of these words for pathal have a negative emotional context like contentious or tortuous and some have a positive context like shrewd, or astute.

What we need to realize is that literal translation tends to takes the so-called fermented grape juice route leaving it up to you to decide the emotional context, only how many really do put it into an emotional context.  Sometimes it is the other way around and we do not realize that we have an option as to the emotional context.  For instance when Israel worshipped the golden calf God said to Moses in Ex 32:10 “Now, therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.”  Now, what could be more clear than that? God was really, really hot with anger and was ready to send bolts of lightning down to destroy the people.  In fact the situation was so out of hand and God was so irrational with His anger that Moses had to jump into the fray and say: “God, God, you’re upset, your angry, I understand, but calm down, count to ten – Aleph, Beth, Gimmel – just cool down a little, relax, have a piece of my bagel and let’s just talk this out. You don’t want to do anything you will regret later.”  Then later we read that God repented: “Moses, Moses, when you’re right you’re right, I don’t know what came over me, I won’t consume them.”  I mean you read that passage in our English Bibles and that is the impression you get.  Why?  Because it is a paraphrase. The translators took  the word ‘aneph and automatically rendered it as anger or wrath.  Well, you can’t blame God, I would be angry and wrathful too.   But you know what, that word ‘aneph simply means the expression of an emotion, it could be anger, but it could also be sorrow, grief, or heartbreak.  The word destruction or consume is in a Hiphal form, it could be rendered not “I will destroy them” but “I am the cause of their destruction by bringing them here in the first place.” The word repent simply means a sigh.  A sigh could be frustration or relief, maybe God was relieved because Moses was an intercessor and God could act upon that intercession. 

We must remember there are options out there. We need to explore all the options.  My opinion of Psalms 18:26?  I choose the word crooked for iggest and entwine for pathal. Hence God is saying that those who are crooked in their ways, He will entwine Himself in them and follow them.  Of course, that is only my opinion, my paraphrase. You choose your own. 

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