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expresses fear or doubt: “Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto
this land; must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest?”
(Gen. 24:5).
If followed by another clause the word almost functions to introduce a protasis:
“Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy …” (Gen.
18:24).
In Num. 22:33 the word has a different force: “And the ass saw me, and turned from
me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee,
and saved her alive.”
PERFECT
A. Adjectives.
(
, 8549), “perfect; blameless; sincerity; entire; whole; complete; full.”
The 91 occurrences of this word are scattered throughout biblical literature with 51 of
them in passages dealing with cultic offerings.
means “complete,” in the sense of the entire or whole thing: “And he shall
offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire unto the Lord; the fat
thereof, and the whole rump, it shall he take off hard by the backbone …” (Lev. 3:9). The
sun stood still for the “whole” day while Joshua fought the Gibeonites (Josh. 10:13). In
Lev. 23:15 God commands that there be seven “complete” sabbaths after the first fruit
feast plus fifty days and then that the new grain offering be presented. A house within a
walled city must be purchased back within a “full” year if it is to remain the permanent
property of the seller (Lev. 25:30).
This word may mean “intact,” or not cut up into pieces: “Behold, when it was whole,
it [a piece of wood] was meet for no work …” (Ezek. 15:5).
may mean incontestable or free from objection. In Deut. 32:4 the word
modifies God’s work: “His work is perfect.” The people of God are to avoid the
idolatrous practices of the Canaanites. They are to “be perfect with the Lord thy God”
(Deut. 18:13). Used in such contexts the word means the one so described externally
meets all the requirements of God’s law (cf. Ps. 18:23). This word modifies the victim to
be offered to
5
(
, 51), times). It means that the victim has no blemish (Lev.
22:18-21) as “blemish” is defined by God: “Ye shall offer at your own will a male
without blemish, of the beeves, of the sheep, or of the goats” (Lev. 22:19).
In several contexts the word has a wider background. When one is described by it,
there is nothing in his outward activities or internal disposition that is odious to God; “…
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (Gen.
6:9). This word describes his entire relationship to God. In Judg. 9:16, where
describes a relationship between men it is clear that more than mere external activity is
meant: “Now therefore, if ye have done truly and sincerely [literally, “in a sincere
manner”], in that ye have made Abimelech king.…” This extended connotation of this
nuance is also evidenced when one compares Gen. 17:1 with Rom. 4 where Paul argues
that Abraham fulfilled God’s condition but that he did so only through faith.
Another adjective,
, appears 15 times. With a cognate in Ugaritic the word means
“complete or perfect” (Song of Sol. 5:2,
RSV
), “sound or wholesome” (Gen. 25:27), and
“complete, morally innocent, having integrity” (Job 1:8).