Bethink

Yet if they bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn and pray unto thee in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt wickedly, 2nd Chronicles 6:37.

In the word "bethink" we have a word used only twice in our King James Bible. Each time it is used, it used in the exact same context, it is found in Solomon's prayer. Like so many words in the King James Bible it is a niche word. It is an exquisitely accurate word meant to give one and only one meaning.

What is Solomon asking for?

2nd Chronicles 6:37 Yet if they bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn and pray unto thee in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt wickedly;

2nd Chronicles 6:38 If they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, and toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for thy name:

2nd Chronicles 6:39 Then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee.

Solomon is praying to the Lord and asking that if the people of Israel find themselves cast away into captivity in a strange land, would the Lord be so kind as to bring them home again? He predicates the mercy of that prayer request upon three things.

1. They bethink themselves.

2. They turn, pray and confess.

3. They turn with their whole heart towards God as they pray.

Most other English translations leave out "bethink themselves". They just sum it all up by using words like repent, change of heart, and pleading. There can be no doubt that there is repentance, a change of heart, and there is pleading when you read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. What the new translations miss is that in Solomon's prayer, the King James bible has dissected repentance.

Just studying the context of each of its two uses, 2nd Chronicles 6:7 and 1st Kings 8:47, the word "bethink" is something that happens prior to confession, prior to turning with their whole heart, and prior to pleading with God. "Bethink" is thought that leads to an action. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as:

Bethink - To think over (a thing) with a view to decision or action; to consider.

To bethink is not ordinary thought. It is the type of thought necessary to make the thinker take action. The captive children of Israel were to first think this thing out. Why are we here? What does God require of us? What does the word of God say? Is there any captive anywhere who does not wish with all of his heart that he could be free? What made the desires of the Babylonian captives so effective?

The thinking that enabled those in captivity in Babylon to go home again was thinking that led to examining why they were there in the first place. If you read the confessions of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel (each in chapter 9 of their respective books), you will see that because they bethought themselves, they were able to confess to God with a true change of heart.

How easy it would be to teach children what bethink means!

Question: What does bethink mean?

Answer: Bethink means to think about something in a way that brings about a decision or an action.

Pearl S. Buck who grew up as a missionary's child in pre-communist China told a tale of a Chinese village after the communists took over. The new communist commissar brought in tractors and steel plows. He plowed up all of the rice terraces that the villagers had built eons ago and which they had tended for generation after generation.

He explained to the bewildered villagers that it was time to bring modern methods to their farming. Yet, when the time of harvest came, famine came with it. There had been a purpose behind every single terrace and every single mud wall that had been built to hold the water. Despite all of his education and all of his indoctrination, the changes wrought by the commissar were destructive and foolish.

For over 100 years, well-meaning church leaders have plowed under the words of the King James Bible with the motive of making the bible easier for people to read. Do more people read and understand the bible as a result? No, never before in the history if English speaking people have so few children or adults understood so little of the bible. We are in a famine of the word of God.

I would dare to say that if a researcher was to gather the children from any random 100 churches still teaching out of the King James Bible, and gather another group of children from 100 random churches that have taught them from the new versions, they would find a wide gap in knowledge and understanding.

I am often pleasantly impressed when in the company of children who have been taught to read a King James bible. Likewise, I have often noted the haphazard bible knowledge of those children whose churches use modern versions. Keep in mind, there are exceptions in both camps. What I am stressing here is that as a whole, my observation has been that children and adults taught to read a King James Bible are better grounded in the word of God.

When schools switched to the new math, children on average became stupider in math. When children in schools were taught new and novel ways of reading, they became stupider in reading. When students were taught new ways to look at geography, they became stupider in geography.

Obviously, that doesn't mean every student. There are of course outstanding students who were taught by the new methods, but nevertheless, by every measurement used to measure an entire population, our students have become dumber.

The new versions have failed in their aim of making the bible easier to understand. As the word "bethink" illustrates, the new versions have lowered the bar for what understanding means. They then boast about how well their readers understand.

The new learning methods haven't meant lower grades for their students. They just award grades on a far easier grading scale. Likewise, the new versions seem easy to understand until you realize that the understanding given is on a far lower scale.