# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S135
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastors’ Library. 135

his faith thereby breaks neither neck nor leg, because he knows the right man, who is called the Way, the Truth, and the Life, of whom the prophets prophesy and bear witness; as stated. Conversely, because the Jews do not accept this Christ, they can neither know nor understand what Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms say, what true faith is, what the Ten Commandments require, and what the examples and histories teach and convey; rather, Scripture must be to them (according to the prophecy of Isaiah 29:11) like a letter to someone who cannot read, who sees the letters very well but does not know what they mean; as the German proverb says:

A white field with black seed,
Many a man passes by indeed,
Who does not know what there he reads.

... Truly, one need not make it one’s aim in translating and glossing to introduce the understanding of the rabbis and grammarians among us Christians; it clings all too readily of its own accord, like pitch and glue, even when one deliberately seeks to guard against it.” (Preface to the Exposition of the Last Words of David. Opp. III, 2782 ff.) But what Luther says here about the use of the linguistic aids supplied by the rabbis naturally applies equally to the writings of rationalistic linguists and, in part, also to those of linguists holding false beliefs. In short: it seems to us that if a poor preacher cannot afford both a modern lexical work for the Hebrew text and an older one, such as that indicated above, he should choose not one of the former but the latter. — There is, moreover, a small modern work containing in nuce what has been gained for Hebrew lexicography through the scholarly research of Gesenius, Winer, and others, and deposited in their larger works; it is to be hoped that even the poorest can afford to purchase it alongside Stock’s Clavis. The title of this “pocket Hebrew-Latin dictionary” is: Lexicon hebraicum et chaldaicum in libros V. T., ordine etymologico compositum, in usum scholarum edidit M. Ern. Frid. Leopold.” Leipzig, published by Tauchnitz. The first edition appeared in 1832 and can probably be obtained for about 75 cents.

b. Ch. Stock also produced for the New Testament a work similar to the one designated under a. for the Old Testament. Its title is: Clavis linguae sanctae Novi Testamenti. It first appeared in 1725 and then went through many new editions within a short time. The same reasons that led us to recommend this author’s lexicon for the Hebrew text as a book of our first class lead us to assign this one for the New Testament the same place. It has the same arrangement and advantages as the former and is nearly as extensive. The author faithfully used the work accomplished by Flacius, Hunnius, Balduinus, Gerhard, Glassius, (Erasmus and Sebastian) Schmidt, Calov, Vitringa, and others who worked in biblical philology before Stock. What is otherwise often regarded as a serious defect in Stock’s lexicons,