[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Now I would like to emphasize that the belligerence against the King James Bible defender understanding of Psalm 12 has always been a curious, even dark, phenomenon. First, these men are usually quick to proclaim the truth of the preservation of God's word (what they would call "the message") yet they are insistent that we are not supposed to see this in the beautiful Psalm !

Psalm 12:6-7
The words of the LORD are pure words:
as silver tried in a furnace of earth,
purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD,
thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

Yet the simple read of Psalm 12 (if the translation is not tampered to "preserve us" or in other ways, another critical trick of deception) clearly fits extremely well the preservation of the word of God. In three complementary yet distinct ways:

a) localized flow of the words - verse 6 to verse 7
b) the theme of the whole Psalm (post #8)
c) theme of the Bible as a whole. (post #5)

Remember that many of the most complementary verses are in the NT and would be out of the perspective of the recent discussion of Jewish commentary.

Worthy of special emphasis is :

1 Peter 1:23-25
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass
The word of the Lord endureth for ever

Which very neatly ties together the very same themes as our verses.

On page one of this thread is a partial list of complementary verses.

The belligerent adversary has to go so far as to claim a total disconnect between :

The words of the LORD are pure words:
as silver tried in a furnace of earth,
purified seven times.

And:

Thou shalt keep them, O LORD,

This is prima facie a very difficult and dubious position to take. And on closer examination it becomes that much more dubious.

One of the ironies though is that they have to take the belligerent position. After all, when you look at the two phrases :

Thou shalt keep them, O LORD,

thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

It is hard to see how anyone, with a straight face, can claim that the two "thems" have totally different referents !

Another irony is that it is the second "them" that contextually most clearly refers to the words of God. The critical phrase that shows this is "from this generation for ever".

In fact, the commentators who fell for the "only people" view will comment, in their more lucid moments, on the awkwardnesses in their understandings. We see them giving strained attempts to account for the "from this generation for ever", a phrase which simply does not fit well to comfort for the poor and needy. Those commentators also struggle with the strangeness of the Psalm moving (in their interpretation) from victory and comfort in preservation of the poor and needy unto despair over the wicked and vile who oppress the poor and needy at the end of the Psalm.

Later I hope to put together a couple of posts shortly showing those awkwardnesses, using mostly the words of the commentators themselves, even the ones stuck with the awkward and ill-fitting "only persons" interp. (The problems are easy to see, but in their zeal to attack the preservation of God's word, the modern version proponents operate on a very low scholastic level.) Granted these are in a sense secondary issues, however in the context of this thread and study they are worthy of note.

Another point that would be good to review are the various interpreters who give a dual or mixed interpretation, how they try to take that position, what makes sense, what does not, and more.

Shalom,
Steven