For the week of June 7, 2025 / 11 Sivan 5785

Naso
Torah:  B’midbar/Numbers 4:21 – 7:89
Haftarah: Shoftim/Judges 13:2-25

And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him. (B’midbar/Numbers 7:89)

I was really touched by something I read in my Scripture reading the other day. I am currently working through the Book of Acts. Chapter nine includes the Lord’s confronting Saul on his way to Damascus as he seeks to quash the fledgling messianic movement. Even though this is a very familiar passage to me, there was something I had never noticed before. It took my reading Richard Longenecker’s commentary (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Revised Edition, 2007) to see it. When the Lord speaks to Saul, we read in the great majority of English translations, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). That this happened at all is extraordinary, especially as the story unfolds. The Messiah not only confronts this zealous persecutor, but he does so by name, while revealing the true implications of his misguided actions, and commissions him to be his key spokesperson to the nations.

However, there is a subtle yet powerful element here that these English translations fail to convey. Acts, like the rest of the New Testament, is written in Greek. Rarely are there any indications that a speech or dialogue originated in a different language. For example, most, if not all, of the speeches and conversations by Jewish people, Yeshua included, would have been in Jewish Aramaic or Hebrew. Yet, there are very few instances where that fact is noted in the Greek. The way it’s done here is most fascinating, partly because most English translations ignore it.¹

First, as you are likely aware, personal names in a foreign context are often pronounced very differently from their original. Sometimes the differences can be drastic. For example, the French name Pierre is Peter in English. John in English is Jean in French, derived from the Hebrew Yochanan. We don’t have time to get into all the whys and wherefores of this phenomenon. A couple of factors are that languages don’t always include the sounds of other languages, and rules for word forms differ from one language to another. The Greek name for Saul is “Saulos” (pronounced sow’-los), representing the Hebrew “Shaul” (pronounced sha-ool’). The reason why we say “Saul” in English, even though we have a “sh” sound, is that the biblical names come down to us via Greek, which does not.

That said, there’s an interesting clue embedded in the Greek text of Acts 9:4. The four times prior when Saul is mentioned in Acts, its author, Luke, uses “Saulos,” the expected Greek derivation of his name. But when the Lord addresses him directly, Luke uses a different spelling, “Saoul” (pronounced sah-ool’). Despite the Greek language’s inability to fully represent Hebrew sounds, this is Luke’s way of telling the reader that God said, “Shaul, Shaul.” Thus, speaking to him in his mother tongue.

This form of his name is also used when he is addressed directly by Ananias, when he healed him of his blindness (Acts 9:17; see also 22:13); the one occurance of his namesake, King Saul (Acts 13:21); and the two times he recounts his encounter from chapter nine (Acts 22:7; 26:14). In the second of these retellings, he makes special mention of the language issue I am referring to, indicating that I am not making a big deal out of nothing (and that this language issue should have been more obvious to me)! Luke wanted people to know this. But why?

I imagine it could have been for accuracy’s sake. That’s what happened. So, tell it like it is. I think there’s more to it. I am writing this on the eve of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, one of the three major festivals on the biblical calendar. It was on this particular festival that God took his messianic restoration plan to the next stage, for it was on this holy day that he poured out his Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) on the believers in Jerusalem in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. God’s plans and purposes, so long incubated within a Jewish context, was going global. This was marked by the miraculous praising of God in a multiplicity of languages. The God of Israel was going to speak to the nations in their own languages.

No one knew, however, that God’s multilingual policy would backfire in that the Jewish Messiah’s Good News to the nations would become incomprehensible to those to whom it originally came. Why bother accurately demonstrating that Luke purposely wrote “Saul” in such a way as to indicate “Shaul,” when the Gospel has been severed from its Jewish roots? I guess few realize that a Gospel that is incomprehensible to the Jewish people is no Gospel at all.

Scriptures from English Standard Version

1. An exception being The Complete Jewish Bible, but wait until the end before checking it out!