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NASB | Ecclesiastes 3:5 A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Ecclesiastes 3:5 A time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. |
Subject: "throwing stones" or "making love"? |
Bible Note: Dear JRM, (I like your profile!) This expression "cover his feet" is called an idiom. Although dropping makes sense with regard to pants -- the artist in you must have inserted "paints" :-) -- but considering the manner of dress at the time, I've never quite been able to conceive it. Of course, this might be because leggings are so much more common to my occidental cultural experience. John Gill politely comments regarding this idiom that "as the Eastern people wore long and loose garments, when they sat down on such an occasion, their feet were covered with them; or they purposely gathered them about their feet to cover them, and so this became a modest expression for this work of nature." However, I note that others consider the expression to be more aptly interpreted as sleeping -- Albert Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, for instance, render it this way. I do not find scholarly agreement with regard to Peterson's implication that Ecclesiastes 3:5 is an idiomatic euphemism for procreation. Of course, that doesn't mean he isn't correct. However, paraphrases are generally produced by folks with presuppositions that differ fundamentally from those who employ grammatico-historical methods. In Him, Doc PS Sometime it would be interesting to have a set of posts regarding special revelation (Scripture) relative to its proper manifestation in artistic expression. |