Vain
Vain
VAIN.1. In vain: Mar 7:7 (|| Mat 15:9) . This is the only place in NT where the adverb is found (orig. accus. from , a folly). The Vulgate has in vanum in Mk., sine causa (= without reason, Cic.) in Mt. Both senses are perhaps included: their worship was meaningless and to no purpose (cf. Jam 1:26 , with Mayors [Com. on James, 71] apt quotation from Isocrates, ad Nicoclen 18 E, ).Our Lord quotes here from Isa 29:13, where LXX Septuagint reads . The clause in the Heb. text may be literally rendered, And their fearing me is become () a statute of men which they have learned. How to account for in the Gr. text is a question still unsolved. Grotius (Opera, ed. Amsterdam, 1679, ii. 155) thought it evident that the LXX Septuagint read? (= , cf. Isa 49:4) and not in the Heb. text, so that the clause would then have meant, And their fearing me is vaina statute of men which they have learned! This brilliant emendation of the text is adopted by Turpie (OT in the New (1868), 196) and Nestle (Expos. Times, xi. 330). It is quite possible that our Lord read in His Hebrew scroll of Isaiah, and that this was the received reading at the time that the Gospels were written. Such a solution of the difficulty would indeed be completely satisfying, but we must remember that the proposed reading is merely a conjectural one, and that no external evidence in its favour has been found. Other suggested explanations of the in the Gospels are, that our Lord used the LXX Septuagint and quoted from it, or that in reporting His answer to the Pharisees the writer or writers quoted memoriter from the LXX Septuagint (it will be observed that the order of the last words is not the same in the LXX Septuagint and in the Gospels). The latter explanation is the one generally preferred by expositors, some of whom assign reasons still more unsatisfying for the presence of . But seeing that it cannot be proved that our Lord did not use an Aramaic word corresponding to in quoting the passage from Isaiah, we feel it best to accept the as stamped with His authority.Our Lord by this citation authenticates and carries forward the teaching of the prophets of the OT as to the vanity of that worship which merely conformed to human traditions, and by which it was thought possible to gain the favour of God without moral obedience (cf. W. R. Smith, OTJC [Note: TJC The Old Test, in the Jewish Church] 293295; Driver, Is. 57; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i. 282).
2. To use vain repetitions: Mat 6:7 . Mrs. A. S. Lewis (Expos. Times, xii. 60) approves of the derivation of from the Arabic btal, vain, useless, recently suggested by Blass. It is one of those hybrid compounds which come into existence in countries where two or more languages are spoken. But it is more probable that the word is onomatopoetic (like , see Stephanus, Thesaurus, s.v.), and is derived from the sound made by the repetition of the same syllable in stammering or stuttering. Our Lord gives the interpretation of the word in the clause following, For they think that they shall be heard for their . (cf. Meyer, Holtzmann, in loc). What He here condemns is the heathenish idea that a reluctant and ungracious Deity is to be worked upon by our saying the same thing over and over again (cf. 1Ki 18:26), or by repeating His honours and titles (cf. Act 19:34). In the words He calls up a picture of those whom His hearers have no desire to resemble (Expositor, 1900 (i.), 239). Pestering the gods with entreaties, dinning into the ears of the gods, were Roman phrases: thus Tacitus speaks of Galba wearying with entreaties the gods of an empire no longer his (Hist. i. 29); cf. Statius, Thebais, 2. 224, Superos in vota fatigant Inachidae; Ter. Heaut. v. 1. 6, Desiste, inquam, deos obtundere. Such expressions set forth the contrast between Jesus teaching of the Divine Fatherhood and the low conceptions about God on which the prayers of the heathen were founded, and give point to the precept, Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him (Mat 6:8).
That our Lords prohibition of is not meant to exclude such prolonged and repeated prayers as are genuine utterances of love and desire, the impassioned pressing-in of the devout spirit into communion with God, is evident from His enjoining increasing earnestness (Mat 7:7-11, Luk 11:9-13) and persevering importunity (Luk 11:5 ff; Luk 18:1 ff.) in prayer, as well as from His own example, when He sought relief from the weight and pressure of His work and continued all night in prayer to God (Luk 6:12), or when He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death (Heb 5:7), satisfying the fervour of His feeling of Sonship with the cry, Abba, Father, and returning to His oratory in the depth of the Garden to offer the same prayer as before (Mar 14:39 (Mat 26:44) , the same petition, rather than the same words; cf. Swete, 327). Our Lords prayers were the beginning of His ever-continuing intercession (Rom 8:34, Heb 7:25), and in the one instance reported of a prayer of considerable length which He offered as His disciples stood around Him (John 17) there is a repetition of the same expressions. With respect to the perfect form of words which He taught us in the Lords Prayer (wh. see), it is by our repeating it often that we come to understand its real depth, and how all our requests are to be brought under one or other of its petitions; and when we have not said it well, we should try to say it better a second or a third time. The true sense of our Lords saying is set forth in one of Bp. Wilsons Maxims of Piety: The eloquence of prayer consists in our proposing our wants to God in a plain manner (Maxims, 132), and still better by Hooker in the words, The thing which God doth regard is how virtuous our minds are, and not how copious our tongues in prayer; how well we think, and not how long we talk, when we come to present our supplications before Him (Eccles. Pol. v. 32. 1); cf. Augustines letter to Proba, quoted by Trench (Ser. on the Mount, 255).
Literature.Grotius, Com, on the Gospels; Expos. Times, xi, xii, ut sup.; Hatch and Redpath, Concordance to the LXX Septuagint .
James Donald.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Vain
van: The adjective of vanity, and representing the same Hebrew and Greek words as does the latter, with a few additions (chiefly , kenos, empty, and its compounds in the New Testament). And vain can always be replaced by its synonym empty, often with advantage in modern English (Job 15:2; 1Co 15:14, etc.). The exception is the phrase in vain, and even there the interchange can be made if some (understood) noun such as ways be added. So to take God’s name in vain (Exo 20:7; Deu 5:11) means simply to take it for an empty (not good) purpose.