When the NT leans on the LXX, specifically

The Public Square
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Hello brothers,

I’ve recently been thinking about a couple cases where Jesus and Paul quote from the OT, and specifically the LXX. While there’s nothing uncommon about the NT referring to the LXX when quoting from the OT, these two instances caught my attention because the manner in which the OT text is being invoked by the NT author seems to depend heavily on the LXX translation, itself, in such a way that the invocation doesn’t really work if quoting from Hebrew. Hopefully I can explain what I mean.

The texts at hand are:

Psalm 4:4 → Ephesians 4:26
Psalm 8:2 → Matthew 21:16

In Ephesians 4:26, Paul is talking about putting off the old man and putting on the new man. One of the sins he targets in this verse and the surrounding text is anger. Within that discourse, he invokes “Be angry and do not sin” from Psalm 4:4.

Now, in its psalmic context, “Be angry and do not sin,” is sort of a curious translation. The Hebrew word rendered angry is ragaz, which is translated in KJV as “Stand in awe,” and NASB95/LSB as “Tremble.” The word has the lexical range of quaking, trembling, being excited, and evidently can be conceptualized as being angry, though that doesn’t seem to be a common usage in the OT. The sense of the psalm clearly isn’t commanding anger, per se, but rather a trembling before God. Nevertheless, the LXX renders it orgizō, which plainly means angry. And Paul is content to grab this translation and run with it for the purpose of his point.

Now, Paul has every right to do that. He is under no obligation to stop and invoke the OT text only in its historical context. I just find it notable that he’s invoking a wording that more or less depends on the LXX. If he was restricting himself to quoting from from the OT in its strictly Hebrew original sense, then his rhetorical use of this verse wouldn’t really land. He simply assumes and leans on the validity of the LXX.

Even more notable is Matthew 21:16, where Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2, saying, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?’"

The Hebrew word translated praise is ōz, which more specifically denotes might or strength. It seems like a conceptual stretch to bring that word to mean praise, and the context of the psalm doesn’t seem to require us to understand it as praise, though it doesn’t seem to exclude it either. Moreover, it seems there are more likely words David would have used to convey praise if that was his direct meaning (Psalm 21:13, for example, uses both oz and zamar—the former meaning strength, the latter meaning praise).

Nevertheless, the LXX renders it as ainos, which clearly has to do with praise and laud, and this is the sense that Jesus invokes. Once again, it isn’t just the OT generally, but the LXX translation, specifically, which carries the force of the point.

Now what’s the point of all this?

It seems important to me to think through the hermeneutical implications of how the NT not only quotes from the LXX but leans on the LXX. It’s been pointed out before that the LXX should be understood as a translation, and not the inspired language of the OT. Nevertheless, it seems undeniable that the LXX is woven into biblical history as part of the baton pass from the Old Covenant era to the New Covenant era in a way that makes it completely unique. The LXX is the only translation of Scripture that forces us to take the non-original language seriously, because that’s how the NT authors require us to think.

I have continued to chew on the whole YHWH/kurios thing for a long time, and the propriety of using Yahweh instead of LORD in translations like the LSB. While I don’t think I can condemn the use of Yahweh, it’s never sat well with me. The translators more or less argue that this is God’s name as it appears in the Hebrew OT, therefore that’s how it should be rendered in the OT, and since the Scriptures belong to the church, we should restore what’s in the original text.

But I’m not sure it’s that simple. The NT authors never set out to retranslate the OT. They interacted with it as a settled, received text. The question is: Is that how we’re supposed to interact with it too? I’m not necessarily looking to launch another thread on that topic, but it’s in that vein of thought that I continue to ponder.

Thanks for reading.

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I am FAR from an expert here, but my understanding is that this is not true at all.

Laying aside the question, “What is the Septuagint” (it’s not completely clear that Greek translations of OT books outside the Pentateuch are properly part of “the Septuagint”), the NT by no means treats the Septuagint as the definitive word on the OT in Greek. Numerous NT citations of the OT agree more with the Masoretic Text than they do with what survives of the Septuagint. Some don’t agree with either tradition.

I don’t think that negates your broader point, though: NT citations of OT Scripture are deep waters indeed. I myself don’t have a neat system for sewing it all up. I’d love to hear further thoughts from you on the topic.

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I take comfort from both parts of that. The text can simply be quoted, even when it isn’t a great translation. It can also be helpful at other times to clarify the translation to help teach God’s people.

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I can’t remember where I read this, but I thought this was effectively an ‘author’s own translation’ where it comes up. The apostles were comfortable using whatever manuscript tradition or their own translation that helped make the Spirit-inspired point they needed to make from the OT quotation.

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Amen, I share the comfort. Many times, if not most of the time, when I go to cite a text of Scripture in conversation, I am not reaching for a word-perfect quote. And even if I am, it may be an accidental amalgamation of NIV/KJV from my childhood memorization, mixed with ESV/NASB from decades of reading. Fortunately, I am not looking to any of these translations as an authority by itself, and it’s the sense of the text which I am appealing to. I take comfort that the NT authors appear to do the same.

The difference, I suppose, is that their hermeneutics as they would manifest on the pages of Scripture are authoritative, and mine are not. So when Paul quotes from the LXX, it’s different from me quoting from the NIV. As the inspired author, he is creating Scripture even as he cites it. Therefore when Paul invokes orgizo, orgizo now becomes its own authoritative word. Orgizo is now immortalized, fixed in the heavens (Ps. 119:89), with complete adjacency to ragaz in Psalm 4:4. Orgizo can no longer be understood as a translation, but it is the very word of Christ in the same way ragaz was and is. We are left, therefore, with two authoritative words for the same Scripture, neither of which will ever pass away (Matt. 24:35), and neither of which we may be ashamed of (Lk. 9:26).

Where do the implications of this end, though?

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On matter of Scripture quotations of Old in New Testament, a helpful distinction:

Nor is quotation to be confounded with translation. It does not, like it, profess to give as exact a representation of the original, in all its aspects and on every side, as possible; but only to give a true account of its teaching in one of its bearings.

There is thus always an element of application in quotation; and it is, therefore, proper in quotation to so alter the form of the original as to bring out clearly its bearing on the one subject in hand, thus throwing the stress on the element in it for which it is cited. This would be improper in a translation. The laws which ought to govern quotation seem, indeed, to have been very inadequately investigated by those who plead the New Testament methods of quotation against inspiration. (emphasis in the original)

— A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, “Inspiration,” The Presbyterian Review 2/6 (April 1881) 256.

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Fascinating question.

One consideration we probably ought to remember: The New Testament text is inerrant and infallible in ways that no other translation of the Old Testament ever can be. For that reason, we perhaps should consider two points:

  1. While the Dead Sea Scrolls show us that the OT Hebrew text as we have it today has very accurately preserved the rabbinical and scribal traditions for two thousand years – something that, within living memory, was still in dispute among OT scholars prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls – the LXX may, at least in some cases, preserve an earlier Hebrew text that was wrongly rejected by the scribes.

  2. The specific LXX text being cited in this discussion appears to be within the accepted possible range of meaning of the Hebrew text, though not a common one. There are many words in the OT and NT that appear only once or twice and we may not know the full range of meaning of the words in common usage in ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek. Perhaps we are dealing with a situation here in which the Apostles knew more than we do about the range of less-common meanings of Hebrew words when those words were used outside the canonical text, or perhaps the Holy Spirit caused them to understand an older range of meaning of ancient Hebrew that had fallen out of common usage by the time the LXX was translated, and was no longer known by the scribes and rabbis after Hebrew ceased to be a vernacular language and became largely a liturgical language.

Here’s a practical example. I hope none of us today would use terms like “preventing grace” in a public sermon for laypeople. We would speak of “prevenient grace” or “grace that goes before.” The term “preventing” has changed its meaning so much that we can’t use the word in its older English definition in modern English outside of academic contexts, i.e., formal papers with footnotes. We may be dealing with a similar situation here in the Hebrew and LXX.

One thing I think we all understand is that we CANNOT say that the Apostles made a mistake by quoting the LXX and not making a direct translation from the Hebrew. Not only does that deny biblical authority, it doesn’t comport with the actual situation in which the Apostles did in fact use the Hebrew text rather than the LXX in numerous cases where they differ.

Anyway, thank you, @jander for raising the question.

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