Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a word you have never heard.
Welcome to “Joni and Friends.” And you are going to be fascinated by this because I bet you’ve read this word before, and you don't even know it. As you may know, Ken and I have been reading through the Bible in a year (this is our tenth year of doing it), and every once in awhile, to keep things interesting, we like to pause and look up the verses we are reading in different translations.
And I did this earlier in the season when reading through Psalm 51. I decided to look it up in the King James Bible. As you all know, Psalm 51 is David’s song of repentance. And I really like the way it comes across in the King James Version. I'm familiar with the King James because I was raised in the Reformed Episcopal Church where we read the Book of Common Prayer. And that Book was written the same time as King James put together the Bible, so I’m comfortable with that language. The phrasing is a little like poetry.
Well, we started reading Psalm 51, and we stopped short at the second verse. We re-read it and thought for certain the publisher had made an error. Because in the King James it says, “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Now I know what you’re thinking: “Joni said that word wrong. It’s not supposed to be throughly, it should be ‘wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity’ right?”
That’s exactly what I thought. So I looked closer at the spelling of the word, and it is spelled "throo-ly." I went ahead and checked other King James Bibles printed by different publishers and I was astounded to see the same thing: the word "throo-ly – not thoroughly, throughly." So I did a little research on this and I learned that in Elizabethan language, the English of the 16th century, the word “thoroughly” literally means "through and through," like, scrubbing something inside out. I guess the best paraphrase might be, “Lord, wash me inside out from mine iniquity — through and through.” Well, I was so heartened to read that. Some translations like the NIV say, "cleanse me from my sin," but I don’t know, somehow, that doesn't quite convey the idea of through and through, does it?
Well, it’s not many times that I prefer English from the 16th century, but this time, I do. Because I just don’t want God to just scrub the outside of my soul, helping me to get rid of surface sins; no, I want him to do more than cleansing me from my sin, I want Him to wash me through and through, clean clear through. ‘Holy Spirit, make my heart Spic N’ Span clean!’ Unfortunately, the word ‘throughly’ has gone completely out of use. In fact, when I wrote it on my computer, my automatic spell checker kept trying to change it to ‘thoroughly.’ But hey, I’m with Shakespeare; I’m with Queen Elizabeth; I’m with King James on this one. Lord Jesus, don’t do an exterior job on my character, get out the "Mr. Clean Magic Eraser," get rid of every vestige of hidden sins. And friend, that’s my prayer for you today. First Thessalonians chapter 5 says (in modern English), “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.” I think the Elizabethans would approve of that.Oh, by the way, in 2016 Ken and I will begin reading through the Bible again – and we’ll be doing it chronologically.So I invite you to join us, just go to my radio page today at joniandfriends.org and download your reading schedule. Again, that’s joniandfriends.org.
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