The Bark Before the Bite

 

Dogs are loud sometimes, and I suppose they were made that way for a reason - warning and protection - but when I'm walking in my neighborhood and a dog who I didn't see suddenly runs from the shelter of its yard right at me and starts barking, I am taken aback, startled. And the barking appears to be sinister. I am automatically afraid. I am the target and I don't like it.

Most of the time, though, the dog doesn't mean to threaten. I've run into this particular dog before and it does not appear to be mean. After all, it's often wagging its tail at the same time as it's making noise. That's what happened this morning. 

I was just walking along, minding my own business and my neighbor's dog, (unleashed) came running towards me, barking up a storm. The first thing I noticed was the noise - loud, harsh, and unrelenting. The second thing I noticed was that he was not connected to any restraint. Together, these things made me very cautious and I intentionally avoided eye contact with it because I'd heard somewhere that dogs are threatened by a human stare and I for sure did not want to do that.

The next things I noticed, surreptitiously, from the corner of my eye, was that the dog was little more than a puppy, a cute little guy, and that his tail was wagging. Hardly sinister.

That got me to thinking.

Thinking about the difference between how we say things and how others hear them. Instruction, Warning, Advice, Opinion. All of them can be shared in love and with an intent to constructive improvement, but I know without doubt that they are not always received that way. They are too often received as Judgement, Criticism, and Dismissal. The bark without any awareness of the desire to play. 

The thing with a dog is that their bark is pretty much one-dimensional. It's one bark, the only one they have. We should be able to do better. In our encounters, we have available many voices, many kinds of words. We have smiles to temper them, help to soften them, and gentle touches to emphasize them. And we don't always take the time to use them or even to take the time to think of them. We also have silence and patience, more powerful and helpful tools than we usually give them credit for.

It doesn't matter what we say if it's not heard they way it was meant. 

Like the dog this morning. I still don't know whether he wanted to play or would have bit me had I reached down to pet him. I suspect it was more the former than the latter, but I'll never know because I wasn't willing to risk the bite. The same is true, I think, of anyone I talk to. If they think I'm going to bite them, they'll turn around and keep walking. Not the result I'm looking for in any conversation I have. 

Now all I have to do when I get ready to open my mouth is remember the dog. 

Early Morning Reflection: Fragility and Reliance on the Precise Wording of Scripture

 

Early mornings have their own breath, before any birds sing or dogs bark or, in my neighborhood, before the neighbors fire up their Harleys to go to work. It's the space between the inhale of full night and the exhale of a new day. Soft and fragile, it comes when the sky turns velvet with the promise of a pink sunrise that hasn't yet come. 

Photos can't capture it because it comes only by feel, so still that its first motion comes from a mosquito that hovers near, not on, my skin. A breeze so insignificant that it gets absorbed into motion of the turning earth at any other time. 

And then it comes. The exhale. That subtle drop in temperature that starts every new day. The ambient movement that precedes first light, creating the slightest of cool breezes, the only one we will get on a day that promises to huddle with humidity and sizzle with sun. A shiver almost comes, but not quite. More a premonition that summer days aren't all beaches and state fairs, that nothing lasts forever, that footing isn't always as sure as it seems. 

And I think of Jerome. Poor, dear Jerome and his Latin Vulgate. 

It took him more than twenty years during the late fourth century and early fifth to translate both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament into the learned language of his day, Latin. The result, his Latin Vulgate translation, has been considered the gold standard by many churches ever since. In many ways, Jerome's translation has become our Bible, the one we have trusted all our lives.

And then comes the day when we understand the extent to which Jerome was just a man, inspired by God and prompted by devotion, but hampered by prejudices and the potential for error from misjudgment, illness, and just plain weariness. 

Then comes the day when we come to grips with examples of what effect the fragility of his humanity has on what we are so sure of. The Bible. Our Bible. What we take for granted as true beyond any capacity for doubt. 

Then comes the day when we learn that not every word of the Bible may be what it seems. 

Take Isaiah 7:14.

You most likely know it by heart:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The Hebrew word used here is almah, a word that was commonly used for a young woman or maiden, a unmarried woman. Jerome knew, of course, that this verse is ideologically paired with Matthew 1:23 and undoubtedly wanted to make sure we made the connection, too:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.

So Jerome in his zeal to clarify doctrine, substituted almah, a word meant to describe an unmarried woman with a word meant to describe a virgin instead. Not a terrible stretch, to be sure, but a stretch nonetheless. By Jerome's deft hand, the prophecy declared in Isaiah is fulfilled precisely in Matthew in a single language we couldn't mistake. Proof of Mary's virginity. Partial proof of Christ's divinity. Perfect. 

But not quite. 

While not quite a blatant mistranslation, it is an interpretation. A well-meaning one, but an interpretation even so. 

And that's the rub.

This doesn't mean that Mary, the mother of Christ, wasn't a virgin, of course. She probably was. Otherwise, what would have been all the fuss? It only means that the Bible, while an inspired document, isn't a word-for-word perfect document, especially in the English we probably all read. Not an infallible Guide for Living but signpost pointing to the God it tries to explain, intended to grow in us a desire for God that even His words will not satisfy.

The Bible is an invaluable guide and companion to a faith based not on its specific words but on God Himself. 

The Bible is a fragile connection to God sometimes, but it is a connection. Like our image in the mirror is not our complete self but a faithful representation, it still tells me valuable information about what I look like. Like the almost indetectable breeze from a mosquito's early morning wings tells me he's there, so does the Bible hover faithfully near to remind me where to look for the breath of God so that I long to turn to Him full-face so as to behold His glory. 

The Bible showcases the way. It points to the path. 

The goal is not the Bible. The goal is God.

 

Mosquito image: Dreamstime

Horizon Image: From my window at Castello di Solfagnano, Perugia, Umbria, Italy, May, 2025

Jerome image: Ascension Press

Gateway image: Entrance from chapel courtyard to garden, Castello de Solfagnano