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NASB | Isaiah 9:2 The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Isaiah 9:2 The people who walk in [spiritual] darkness Will see a great Light; Those who live in the dark land, The Light will shine on them. [Is 42:6; Matt 4:15, 16] |
Bible Question: Greetings, I have a question about the tense of this verse as used in the NASB. It reads as if the seeing of the great light is a future event, but most of my other translations (ESV,HCSB,NET,NIV,ISV) render this verse as something that has already happened. So the NASB says, "WILL SEE a great light" and my other translations say, "HAVE SEEN a great light" or "SEE a great light". I asked my pastor about this and he found this curious as well as he says that the original Hebrew reads in the past tense and should be translated as it is in the ESV. We do love the NASB translation and were just curious about the translation decision here. Please feel free to be as technical as you like with your response. Thanks for any and all help. God bless. |
Bible Answer: Hi, dlowrie290... Welcome to the forum! We do not have any regular forum participants who are Hebrew scholars. For what it is worth: My thought on the question you are asking would tend to be rendered from a confidence in the analogy of faith. We know that the reference of Isaiah 9 is a Messianic prophecy. Therefore, think of the many places that the New Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ being the light of the world. (I am thinking especially of our Lord's utterances in John 3 to Nicodemas; then again in John 8, in the Temple, at the end of the Festival of Lights.) Thus, the ongoing fulfillment by the Son, sheds light -- if you will forgive the pun -- on a proper exposition of the passage in Isaiah. Think through the various possible conjugations of the verbs of Isaiah 9:2 with these things in mind. It ought to be helpful. In Him, Doc |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Is 9:2 | Author | ||
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dlowrie290 | ||
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DocTrinsograce |