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NASB | 1 Chronicles 17:16 ¶ Then David the king went in and sat before the LORD and said, "Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house that You have brought me this far? |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 1 Chronicles 17:16 ¶ Then David the king went in and sat before the LORD and said, "Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house and family that You have brought me this far? |
Bible Question:
Brain teaser 2; "Who am I" prayer of David. 1 Chronicles 17:16 and 2 Samuel 7:18 record the "Who am I" prayer of David. With one small change this prayer can be shown to be a prayer to a Triune God; in the sense that the pronouns total are divisible by three. How important would that be to you or any person considering the Deity of Christ? The change that would have to be made to make the pronouns divisible by three would be to interpret 1 Chronicles 17:20 "neither is there any god besides Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears." In order to get this result, and for ease in counting capitalized pronouns, go to your NASB. My question is, "How important is it to you?" |
Bible Answer: Dear Ray, The Hebrew word used here in 1 Chr 17:20 is 'elohiym', which is the same word that is used in reference to God in 2 Samuel 7:22 and Genesis 1:1.. In all three places in Scripture, the word "God" is capitalized. Also, all three translations that we use to study capitalization capitalize "God" here, thus giving weight to the conclusion that the word should indeed be capitalized. "But why?" I can see where you would side with "any god" rather than "any God", but the Hebrew word used is 'elohiym' here. So it could be stated, "neither is there any 'elohiym' besides Thee, according to all that we have heard.." In other words, there is nothing else in all of existence that is like God! There is truly nothing like God- there is not anything that contains His properties or nature except Him! So in this sense, we can truly say, "neither is there any God besides Thee"! However, if you assert that it must be this way: "neither is there any god besides Thee", then you are calling our Lord a 'god', since the prepositional phrase 'besides Thee' is directly describing 'god', which is clearly referring to the Almighty (elohiym)! However, I am sure that you didn't mean to do this, and I know that you would always call our Lord "the God" instead of a 'god'. I believe that this is the underlining importance of the use of capitalization in this verse. Blessings, Nolan |