MANY WORDS WITH ONE MEANING
The concept of “land” is one of the most common themes in the Bible. In the King James version, the Hebrew word “erets,” which is translated as “land” 1543 times and as “earth” 712 times in the Old Testament. This ranks highly in usage compared to the Hebrew word “elohiym” which is translated as “God” 2346 times in the Old Testament. We learn from this comparison that it is very important to understand what God means when he uses the words “land” and “earth.”

Looking at the definition of erets we see that it can be translated in a wide variety of ways in different versions of the Bible. Even within in the King James version alone we find different translations from one context to another. It is beyond the scope of this page to discover how erets is translated in other version of the Bible. It is possible, however, to get an idea of how erets is translated by making comparisons within the book of Genesis where we find the number of times erets is translated different ways in four different versions of the Bible.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We chose to use the book of Genesis for this comparison because it is the book that has the highest incidence of  erets. The book with the next highest incidence is Jeremiah. A click on this Jeremiah link goes to a page with all scriptures that include “land” in the King James Version. Investigation of this page reveals the option for readers to conduct searches in all other books of the Bible by clicking on the “Book” drop down arrow.  The search can also be changed to include other Bible versions by clicking on “Translation” drop down arrow.

What we learn from this table is that it is far more common to translate erets as “land” than earth, country or ground in these four versions of the Bible. These differences are worth noting because our cultural associations for these four words varies from word to word. That will not seem terribly important until we remember that all these definitions are used to translate one word (i.e. erets).  

The cultural associations individual readers have with land, earth, country and ground can have significant influence on how Bible verses are interpreted — even to the point of gross misinterpretation because the Bible only uses human words that we do understand to symbolically to represent spiritual truths that we do not understand.

God chose erets as the word Old Testament writers would use in communicating his message to his people for a reason. It is consistent with the common Biblical pattern where he uses agricultural and physical concepts to communicate spiritual concepts.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: See Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies and Shadows and all of its subordinate pages for discussion of the most common physical concepts that God uses to symbolically represent spiritual truths. It is not an understatement to say that understanding these symbols is absolutely necessary to understanding the Bible.

If it was important to God to use the word erets, it is important to readers to understand what God meant by that word. Gaining understanding of what God means is complicated, and confused by the fact that different Bible translators used personal judgment, and personal biases, in choosing how to translate the word erets.  This is important because the biases of the Bible translators can greatly influence how Bible passages are interpreted by readers. So, best we can, we want to get to the real meaning of what God intended.

The translation process is further complicated by the fact that the word erets has many different meanings in Hebrew. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to consider the scriptural context in which erets is used to understand which particular meaning God has in mind in each particular scripture.

The other confusing part of translating scripture is the fact that all words have definite associations for readers in their own culture. Thus readers who do not elect to check out the definitions of a word in Hebrew of Greek will default to their own cultural definitions when interpreting scripture. This can be a big mistake when the Hebrew and Greek definitions include variations that are not found in the reader’s own culture. When one of those subtle variations is the meaning that God intends in a particular scripture does not exist in the reader’s native culture, chances of misinterpretation are very high. It is because these cultural variations exist with respect to the word erets and land that we are making this effort to instruct readers about avoiding such mistakes.

COMMENTARY ON BIBLE MISINTERPRETATION: The reason there are so many different religions is because theologians who made/make decisions about what words should be used to translate from the original Hebrew and Greek had their own personal ideas about how the original scriptures should be translated into their native language. In addition to their cultural associations with words, they also had theological ideas that influenced their choice of words. It can be said, therefore, that their personal choices had the effect of influencing how each Bible student understands the Bible. The result of this dynamic is that the Bible is not understood correctly by anyone.

 When we look at the thousands of Hebrew and Greek words that are translated into other languages by Bible writers with their own cultural perspectives and theological biases, it is easy to understand how different religions reach different doctrinal conclusions even though they are all reading accepted versions of the Bible. It could be said, therefore, that there is not one Bible but many Bibles. And it is impossible to say which Bible is the correct one just like it is impossible to say which religion is the correct one.

There are several reasons why this problem exists:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • Religious people insist on interpreting the Bible literally — not symbolically.
                          • Bible writers and Bible readers interpret the Bible according to their cultural and intellectual understanding of words.
                          • Neither Bible writers nor Bible readers understand how God uses Symbols, Signs, Types, Parables, Copies, and Shadows in the literal Bible to communicate spiritual truth.
                          • Bible writers and Bible readers wrongly believe that the written Bible and God’s spoken word are identical.
                          • Neither Bible writers or Bible readers listen to God’s voice for understanding.

The only remedy for this problem is for each Bible reader to listen for God’s spoken voice to explain the spiritual meanings of the Bible. The meanings in Hebrew and Greek are useful, but hearing God’s spoken voice is absolutely necessary for understanding. To hear God’s voice, it is also absolutely necessary that people who want to know God should trust no man to explain the Bible for them. If they will do this, it does not matter which Bible version they read. God, not men, will do the interpreting for them.

STUDY TIP: See these pages for understanding of how to read the Bible while listening to God’s spoken voice.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • STUDY
                              • Assemble the Puzzle
                              • Click the Links ***
                              • Relevance of All Scriptures
                              • Study for Discipline
                              • Examine Yourself
                              • Study Tips

Regarding God’s warnings to not trust men for teaching about God. Trusting people for teaching about God is the Old/First Covenant way of religion. The New Covenant way to learn is to listen to God’s voice and he will teach you what you need to know by writing his laws on your heart.

It is critical to understand that this warning has an important exception. The people who should not be trusted are false prophets. False prophets are Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil. These teachers feed soulish, evil fruit (i.e. words) to naive religious people. God also calls these teachers Serpents, Devils, Satans, Adversaries, Demons, Evil Spirits and Anti-Christs. These are the teachers to avoid.

It is good and necessary, however, to trust the words of true prophets. True prophets feed good, clean spiritual food to people who have the ability to hear God’s spoken voice. God also calls these teachers angels, messiahs, high priests, witnesses, and warriors. These are all prophets that God sends to speak to people who are enslaved by religion. Jesus was the premier example of a true prophet. People who know how to discern between good and evil will listen to these teachers and avoid false prophets.

With those risks of misinterpretation in mind, it is always good to check out the definitions of Hebrew and Greek words by applying the process described above for finding word definitions in the KJV or NASB in either the Old Testament or New Testament.

Since the definitions of most words are usually well established for readers in their native language and culture, most Bible readers will not often necessary to review contemporary word definitions to get to God’s definition of a word. Instead, they will naturally apply their default definition for a word to interpret a Bible scripture without considering that the definition they use may not be the definition God had in mind. Also they may not be aware that scholars who have translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek may have applied religious biases (i.e. Old/First Covenant vs New Covenant) in making their interpretations. Or, they may have just made errors in judgment about which English word to choose in the translation. Either way, the potential for errors in interpretation exists, and the only way to guard against such errors is for readers to research word definitions in Hebrew and Greek and make their own judgments about what God meant when he choose a particular word in a particular scripture.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Getting to the correct literal understanding of a word will still not lead Bible students to the correct interpretation of a word. The ultimate goal is to arrive at the correct symbolic meaning. This requires having the mind and spirit open to God’s interpretation while rejecting conventional meanings and interpretations learned from religious teachers.

See Listen While Reading for understanding of how to come to the right interpretation of scripture.

See Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies and Shadows for more  about Bible interpretation.

In this study of the word erets, we think it will be instructive to review the common variations of land, earth, country and ground because they are loaded with different meanings in contemporary English usage. The next table compares these modern definitions as defined by Merriam Webster:

As readers review the definitions for the four words in the above chart, they will find some definitions that mean more, or less, to them than others. We also suspect that for most readers the concept of land, earth, country and ground all have strong associations with physical land/dirt/earth/ground that can be seen and touched. The problem with these associations is that these are not the meanings that God had in mind when he used the word “erets” in the Bible. Therefore, many scriptures in which the word erets appears in the original text are highly vulnerable to misinterpretation. We will make the mistake of misinterpreting if we do not always remember that God’s focus is always on spiritual matters — not materiel matters.

Since our purpose in this website is to identify scriptures that are wrongly interpreted, and since erets appears so many times in scripture, we think it is very important to understand clearly what God intended when he used the word erets. Therefore, we will try in the following pages to discover God’s intentions through the use of other scriptures.