The Semantics Of Sacramental Language -- By: R. A. Ward

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 17:1 (NA 1966)
Article: The Semantics Of Sacramental Language
Author: R. A. Ward


The Semantics Of Sacramental Language

With Special Reference To Baptism

R. A. Ward

Our point of departure must be the Old Testament, though the available data are somewhat scanty. We read in 4 Kings 5:14 LXX that Naaman ‘went down and ἐβαπτίσατο in the Jordan Seven times . . .’. LSJ suggest that he ‘dipped himself’. Turner’s view1. that both middle and passive of this verb in the New Testament have the sense of ‘allow oneself to be . . . ‘is hardly relevant here. But we should not fail to notice that he dipped himself ‘according to the word of Elisha’. The prophet had told him (verse 10) to wash seven times in the Jordan and that he would be cleansed. In obedience he dipped and was cleansed. ‘To baptize’, then, means ‘to dip’, with an overtone of ‘to cleanse’ or ‘to wash’. Perhaps we might render ‘to wash by dipping’. It would seem that in further uses of the verb one or other of these ideas, if not both, is emphasized according to the context. In the present instance ‘dip’ is faithful to the Hebrew טבל, and ‘wash’ is justified by the context. (The Hebrew verb can be used without any possible reference to washing: Job 9:31, RV, ‘If I wash myself with snow (water) . . . yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch.’ We may find that the Greek verb is similar.)

Judith 12:7 reads: ‘. . . ἐβαπτίζετο in the camp at the fountain of water’. The RV translates ‘washed herself’ and A. E. Cowley2 in a note renders by ‘bathe’ and speaks of ‘(merely ceremonial) washing’. In the following verse he

remarks that she came up, ‘i.e. from the water’. The emphasis here would lie on the ablution rather than on the dipping. Compare ‘βαπτιζόμενος after (contact with) a dead body and toucheth it again, τί ὠφέλησεν ἐν τῷ λουτρῷ αὐτοῦ?’ (Sirach 31 (34):25). W. O. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box note the futile contradiction between the ritual act of purification and the immediate contraction of defilement again, and cite in illustration of the thought 2 Peter 2:20-22;

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