by Kathy Brasby | Jul 12, 2013 | Hope
Authors learn early to do their best not to repeat words. Repeating words is monotonous in our English literature. Rather than use stairs four times in the paragraph, for example, use stairs and steps and pronouns. If you have to, rewrite to avoid repeats.
A useful biblical technique is word repetition and, ironically, we often miss it because our English translations plug in synonyms for the repetitions.
But in doing so, we sometimes overlook the author’s point.
For example, there is a return motif in the Bible. The story of Jacob is about a man returning to his homeland after 20 years of exile. The grand story of the Old Testament is the return of a remnant of people to Palestine after the Babylonian exile.
But the story I want to examine briefly is the return story of Naomi in Ruth 1.
The Hebrew word for return in Ruth 1 is shub, meaning return. It carries deep meaning and rich connotations of the rhythm of life, of people returning to a previous condition, of people going out and coming in.
At times, shub is translated return and at other times synonyms are employed. Those are similar in meaning but we miss the repetition which underscores the theme of return. Here is where shub is used in Ruth 1:
- Ruth 1:6 “…then she started to return with her…”
- Ruth 1:8 “Go back each of you to your mother’s house…”
- Ruth 1:10 “No, we will return with you to your people…”
- Ruth 1:11 “Turn back, my daughters, why would you go with me?”
- Ruth 1:12 “Turn back,my daughters, go your way…”
- Ruth 1:15 “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods…”
- Ruth 1:15 “Return after your sister-in-law…”
- Ruth 1:16 “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you.”
- Ruth 1:21 “The Lord has brought me back empty…”
- Ruth 1:22 So Naomi returned together with Ruth.
- Ruth 1:22 …her daughter-in-law who came back with her.
That many uses of shub mean something. Although the translation obscures the repetition of shub, we still can uncover what the author intended. He wrote about Naomi’s return. His repetition clarifies his point.
Naomi was returning to her homeland and to God. She was returning to the fullness she thought God had torn away from her. She was returning to the kindness of God’s plan.
Word repetition set the stage for the author’s intended purpose in Ruth.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 10, 2013 | Technology
In the days before I had much money, I got myself a poor person’s cruise control on my car. In those days, I drove a 5-speed VW Rabbit and so I sweet-talked my brother, the mechanic, into installing a throttle lock.
What the system consisted of was a gadget attached to the gas pedal and another line attached somehow to the brake. When you engaged the system, the gas pedal was locked into place. Pressing the brake released the lock.
This sounds like the sort of thing a person whose brain has not fully developed yet might try out. And that was the case.
Because the area where I generally drove was flat, the system worked adequately. I’d reach the right speed, lock in the throttle, and relax. My speed would shift with any ups and downs in the road but not much.
I was now in league with those fancy-schmancy cruise controls.
So one day my sister and I took off for Denver in my Rabbit. I don’t remember why she was driving but I do remember that we had a good-sized hill to clear on the route.
When I drove, I kicked off my throttle lock when I got to the hill.
My sister didn’t.
So up the hill we climbed. Gravity being what it is, our speed dropped. And dropped.
Cars passed us. Lots of cars passed us.
We chugged our way to the top like the little engine that could.
And then we started down. We zoomed down the hill, flying past cars that had passed us like we were tortoises. Now we were the hare.
“Those people think I’m crazy!” my sister wailed.
Perhaps they did. But we got so far ahead of that pack we didn’t see any of them all the way to Denver. So it really didn’t matter.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 8, 2013 | Hope
The secretary and I were the only two women working in this shop. There’s something about rubbing elbows with a bunch of guys that can give you bad dreams.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Let me explain.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. This was not a good thing to reveal to a bunch of guys but there it was.
I wasn’t overly fond of mice myself but determined not to admit to it. But the guys still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t really unusual and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner watching. The service manager threw his hands in the air.
“It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
I decided to ignore Tweedledee and Tweedledum that day.
They didn’t harass me again – not enough hysteria to suit them, I’m sure – but one day our secretary came back from lunch to find a brown lunch bag on her desk. Stapled shut and wiggling.
She ran screaming to the break room, sure they had trapped a live mouse for her.
After shaking her hands and sobbing forever, she still refused to enter her office. So the service manager retrieved the bag from her office and brought it out, where he sliced off the top and set the trapped frog free.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum spent the afternoon freshening up the secretary’s desk before she’d return to work. Boss’s orders.
Something good did come out of it, though. Whenever the two guys got the idea to go in search of mice, they remembered four hours of scrubbing a desk and sat down until that idea passed.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 4, 2013 | writing
Jeff Goins has a great blog post on the Revolutionary Power of Words. Appropriate for Americans on Independence Day!
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 1, 2013 | Personal
In the movie Up, a dog with teeth bared moving in for the win could be distracted by the call, “Squirrel!” The dog’s head instantly rotated in search of the new prey.
That problem isn’t just with dogs. My sister and I have been struggling with the same issue.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
I recently had a couple of errands to run before visiting my mother, who is currently living in a nursing home. From the bank, I headed downtown for errand #2 – picking up a part from an appliance store. One block before I arrived at the store, I instead turned right onto Main Street and drove back across town to the nursing home.
Two hours later, I realized I hadn’t snagged the part I needed.
Squirrel!
A few days ago, my teenage son and I headed out on a day-long trip. Before we walked out of the house, I reminded him, “You ought to take a water bottle with you.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said and filled a stainless steel bottle pulled from the cupboard.
Then we got into the car and I buckled in. “Oh,” I said. “I forgot my water bottle.”
I got out of the car, headed back toward the house, and he rolled down his window. “Would you grab mine while you’re in there?”
Squirrel!
My sister is working with an essential oil that is supposed to help with distractedness. I’m calling it squirrel oil and, if it helps her, I may mainline the stuff.
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