Significant Words of the Book of Mormon
English Words Verify Hebrew Authenticity of The Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon Correctly Applies the Hebrew Phrase 'To Miss The Mark.'
Ancient Hebrew language reflects the thinking of Ancient Hebrews. Ancient Hebrews associated life with actions more than things. According to Hebrew language expert Jeff Benner, ancient Hebrew associated sin with the action when an archer's arrow misses the target. The word Sin literally means in Hebrew 'to miss the mark'. English bibles don't include language about 'missing a mark,' but it was apparently how the ancient Jews understood the action of sin. Insite from Mr. Benner and other Hebrew scholars today are more recent certainly than when the Book of Mormon was published.Here is an exerpt from Mr. Benner's website regarding Missing the Mark:
"The Hebrew word for "sin" is חטאה (hhatah, Strong's #2403) and literally means "miss the mark."
From my understanding of the Bible, there are two types of sin, accidental and deliberate.
I explain it this way. The Hebrew people were a nomadic people and their language and lifestyle is wrapped around this culture.
This was a "mistake" (accidentally missing the mark), but not deliberate.
Once you are back on the right path, all is good. However, if you decide to leave the path and make your own, you are again "lost from the path", but this time, being a deliberate act, it is a purposeful mistake (missing the mark on purpose). In the Bible God gives his "directions" (usually translated as "commands") for the journey that his people are to be on. As long as they remain on that journey, they are tsadiq (Strong's #6662, usually translated as "righteous," but literally means "on the correct path"), even if they accidentally leave the path, but return (this is the Hebrew verb shuv, Strong's #7725, usually translated as "repentance," but literally means "to return") back to the correct path."
(above quote by Jeff Benner at
https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/definition/sin.htm.
Learn more Hebrew words at Jeff Benners website https://www.ancient-hebrew.org )
The Book of Mormon uses the idea of 'missing the mark' describing ancient Jews and their understanding of scripture. Because they despised plainness, thinking God could only be deep and mysterious, and certainly not human, Jacob writes (550 B.C.) in the Book of Mormon that the Jews 'looked beyond the mark.'
Mr. Benner also emphasizes the relationship of staying on a path (being righteous) vs straying from the path. One of the Book of Mormon's most famous types is the concept that staying on path that leads to the tree of life and likewise the wicked who stray from it. Click Here to read many Book of Mormon scriptures comparing a path to the way to Christ. (More on paths in a separate word Hebrew word study.)
To look beyone the mark was exactly to miss the target. But the context associating a target and missing it, is certainly not found in English language bibles of today. However the Book of Mormon, once again, uses the word and concept in appropriate context to the Hebrew way of thinking 2500 years ago.To look beyone the mark is the most appropriate English phase associating this Hebrew concept with the English way of thinking. Again, nowhere did English Bible's explain this basic Hebrew phrase when the Book of Mormon was published, yet its use is perfectly in context. To look beyond the mark was to miss the target in their hearts.
The Book of Mormon and the term 'The Mark.'
Here is what the Book of Mormon says about the Jews who 'looked beyond The Mark.'
But behold, the Jews were a stiff-necked people,
And they despised the words of plainness and killed the prophets
and sought for things that they could not understand; Wherefore, because of their blindness,
which blindness came by looking beyond the mark,
they must needs fall, For God hath taken away His plainness from them
and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it;
And because they desired it, God hath done it, that they may stumble.
(Also for further study, click Here to see how Plainness is Correct Hebrew Word in English)
How would someone know to include so many Hebrew words like 'the mark,' 'plainness,' 'the path' in English and use them in ways only understood today?
Perhaps the Book of Mormon is simply what it claims to be: an ancient Hebrew record.