Those Difficult Names

One of the hurdles I have found over the years in persuading people to do Bible readings in church is the unpronounceable names.

Whether these are long like Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz or short like Kios, many potential readers come to the name, spot that there is more than one way it could be rendered and immediately freeze. “I don’t mind reading for you,” they say, “but please make sure there are no difficult names in the passage.”

You can buy English pronouncing dictionaries. Some - dating from a day when the problem exercised many more minds than now - have a wide range of Bible names and advice on how to say them.

I tell people they worry too much, though. The simple truth is that the languages of Bible times were so outlandish to our ears that we can’t possibly pronounce the names authentically. Your guess is as good as mine!

OK, I can tell you with some confidence that the name “Salmon” was never pronounced like the English fish spelt the same way. The “l” is meant to be sounded. Also “Shealtiel” shouldn’t come out like “shield teal”. But surely there are worse crimes than getting those details wrong!

Why, you might ask in exasperation, did God cause His word to be written in a day and a culture so far removed from our own, so that we are left to struggle with names and places that are completely unfamiliar?

I can think of one excellent reason. One day when I was a student an African studying theology approached me and admitted, “I’m not a believer”. “Why?” I asked. “Christianity is western,” he complained. “It’s the culture of colonialists like the British. It has nothing to say to us Africans.”

I thought how false and unfortunate this was. You could equally claim that no culture is at home with the Bible outside a narrow strip of land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The places and the names belong largely to that restricted area. Even then, 2000 years have passed and many of those features have changed beyond recognition. The concept that “God was man in Palestine”, as Sir John Betjeman put it, is not something that we Brits can wear like a glove.

Thank God every race and culture is in the same boat! Each one must wrestle with the unfamiliar to pledge allegiance to Christ. In particular we must abandon the culture of self-reliance to which we are all wedded. As we do so, our storm-tossed boat becomes the focus of a glorious divine rescue mission.

Day by day His tender mercy,
healing, helping, full and free,
sweet and strong, and ah! so patient,
brought me lower, while I whispered,
‘Less of self, and more of Thee!’
      Theodore Monod, 1836-1921

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”        (Revelation 7:9-10 ESV)