I was recently flipping through an older book by Andrew Blackwood entitled Preaching from Samuel. I was stunned and convicted to read the following paragraph.
"In order to master the twin books of Samuel the parish minister needs to map out a fairly extensive course of study at home. Ideally he would begin with the original Hebrew, and then work slowly. The present writer has done that in many parts of the twofold record. At one time he went rapidly through First Samuel in the Hebrew and the Greek, the Latin and the French, as well as the German. In the coming pages he will refer mainly to the American Revised Version, partly because of the division into paragraphs. He regrets that he has not had access to the forthcoming revision by present-day American scholars. That work should prove worthy of note for accuracy of translation and beauty of English prose" (Andrew Blackwood, Preaching from Samuel [New York: Abingdon, 1946], 13).
I wonder how many of us pursue our study of a text that we will be preaching with the same kind of diligence.
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