Fiery Revolutionaries, Merciful Lovers

4/17/2026

Jesus showed us in Himself and His Spirit that He was a fiery revolutionary and a merciful lover. Both at the same time.

What do you suppose adding little bitty numbers did to His words to raise up fiery revolutionaries and merciful lovers in this present age?

Chapters (early 1200’s):
The division of the Bible into chapters is generally credited to Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury and scholar around 1227 AD. He organized the Latin Bible into the chapter structure we still use today. This made it far easier for clergy, scholars, and students to reference specific portions of Scripture.

Verses (1500’s)
The smaller verse divisions came later. The New Testament verses were added by Robert Estienne (also called Stephanus), a French printer and scholar, in 1551 AD. He introduced verse numbers in the Greek New Testament. A few years later, he applied a similar system to the whole Bible.

Little numbers and breaking His words into chapters and sub-chapters as humans have done—does not help with fiery revolutionaries and lovers. It can instead create self-justifying lawyers, nerds, poet-wannabes, and orators.

God’s Spirit never “handled” the Spirit writing the same way religious children do today.

Here are the clearest examples of NT writers “misquoting” the OT:
1. Jesus / Luke 4:18-19—Quotes Isaiah 61:1-2, but adds “recovery of sight to the blind” not in the Hebrew Text, and omits “bind up the brokenhearted”
2. Matthew 27:9-10—Attributes Zechariah 11:12-13 quote to Jeremiah
3. Mark 1:2-3—Blends Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3, but credits only Isaiah
4. Stephen / Acts 7:14—Says 75 people went to Egypt with Jacob; Hebrew text says 70
5. Stephen / Acts 7:2-4—Places Abraham’s call before he lived in Haran, differing from the Genesis sequence
6. Paul / Romans 9:33—Quotes Isaiah 28:16, but inserts “stumblingstone and rock of offence,” language not in the original
7. Paul / Romans 11:3-4—Quotes 1 Kings 19:14-18 but reverses the order of Elijah’s complaint and God’s reply
8. Hebrews 1:7—Cites Psalm 104:4 with subject and object apparently reversed
9. Hebrews 8:8-2 vs. 10:16-17—Quotes Jeremiah 31 twice in the same letter with differing wording each time
10. Matthew 2:15—Quotes Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt I called my son”) as fulfilled by Jesus, when Hosea explicitly meant Israel’s exodus
11. Matthew 2:18—Cites Jeremiah 31:15 (Rachel weeping) as fulfilled by Herod’s massacre—a passage with no predictive intent in context
12. Acts 2:16-21 (Peter / Joel 2)—Peter’s quote adds “and they shall prophesy” to Joel 2:28, a phrase not in the Hebrew text

“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other! From now on, families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against, or two in favor and three against. Father will be divided against son and son against father; mother against daughter and daughter against mother; and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law! Then Jesus turned to the crowd and said, ‘When you see clouds beginning to form in the west, you say, “Here comes a shower!” And you are right. When the south wind blows, you say, “Today will be a scorcher!” And it is. You fools! You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the present times. Why can’t you decide for yourselves what is right?’” (Luke 12:49-57)