“Far be it from me to eat another pizza.” “Woe to me for I’m late for church.” “Truly I tell you there’s no better coffee than this.” “May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I binge-watch a show until 5 AM again.”
I’m guessing you don’t talk to your friends, or anyone for that matter, like that. (Maybe you should, just for fun.) But that’s how the Bible “speaks”. The time was different. The culture was different. The language was different. So the sayings were different.
What do you think when you read these strange sayings over and over again in the Bible? Bothered? Confused? Fascinated? Nothing?
Sometimes people ask how I could translate the Bible verses on the fly without checking. I don’t. I memorize verses but they are far from enough and slow in the coming. However, I am usually able to paraphrase them and capture both the meaning and the sentiment by remembering how the Bible “speaks”.
When I first encountered these sayings, my first thought was, frankly, “Who talks like that?” Then curiosity took over and I couldn’t even get them out of my head. Gradually, a general sense of “Bible speak” began to take shape, and was reinforced as I read more. It could be sentences like those, or more subtly the word choices and phrases. I just had no idea that they would come in handy during interpretation at any point.
The sense of “Bible speak” is useful not only for better paraphrasing and interpretation, but also to familiarize with the Bible itself and makes remembering verses much easier. We naturally remember “odd” things more easily than mundane ones. So, without any extra effort, just read the Bible, but be fascinated by it, be curious about it, and let your brain do the rest. Whatever you do, don’t dismiss them.