Lord or LORD or lord?

Confusion about ‘lord’

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. He went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.”
Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
The commander of the LORD’s army replied…
— Joshua 5:13-14, NIV

Do you understand this? Well, if you’re a christian, you’ve probably been conditioned to understand that LORD written with all capital letters refers to the christian’s God. So you may conclude that the commander means that he is the commander of the army of God. But what if you’re not a preconditioned christian? What if you’re a normal person with a decent command of language who one day decides to read the bible to learn what it’s all about? Would you still understand the above passage? What does it mean to command the army of the LORD? For the question arises: which LORD? And would you understand that Joshua doesn’t mean the same Lord as the LORD, when he asks about which message ‘my Lord’ has for him?

And we’re not done yet. There’s a footnote for verse 14 on the word ‘Lord’ in the passage “”What message does my Lord have?” The footnote states that rather than Lord with a capital ‘L’ it could also be spelled without capital ‘l’, as ‘lord.’ So Joshua could be asking “what message does my Lord have?” but he could just as well have asked “What message does my lord have?”

As a normal person with a decent command of language, my question would be: what is going on here? Isn’t a footnote supposed to explain something? But instead it confuses the issue even more.

The translators and theologians have made such a mess of translating the name and the titles of YHWH, that they can’t even decide how to translate a dialogue between Y’hoshua ben Hun (renamed Joshua in English) and a commander of the army of YHWH.

Here is the text again, this time with proper names and titles.

Now when Y’hoshua was near Y’riychow, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. He went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of YHWH, I have now come.” Then Y’hoshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my master have for his servant?”
The commander of YHWH’s army replied…
— Joshua 5:13-14, Not the NIV

See? When the text contains its proper names and titles, everyone can easily follow the narrative. But theologians have screwed up the text and ripped out the name of YHWH in order to remain faithful to their cursed¹ traditions, and then they further screwed up in a footnote which aims to explain their mess but which only increases the confusion.

YHWH sends the commander of his army to Y’hoshua ben Hun and Y’hoshua falls face down in reverence, and asks the commander: what message does my master have for his servant. This is the way men spoke. And whoever travels in Arabian nations will know that this is still the conventional way of speaking.

Y’hoshua asked the commander who he was, and learned that he was a commander, employed in the army of YHWH. Now Y’hoshua ben Hun himself was appointed as leader of the armed men of Yisra’el, and he immediately recognised that the man he spoke to was commander of a much larger and more powerful army than the army of Yisra’el, and was therefore his superior. So he addressed the commander as ‘my master’ and consequently denoted himself to be ‘his servant.’ It immediately makes sense for Y’hoshua to call himself ‘servant’ when we read that he calls the commander ‘my master.’

Now I admit that the term ‘my lord’ also expresses the fact that Y’hoshua recognises the commander’s authority, but it does not with the same clarity explains why Y’hoshua calls himself his servant as the term ‘my master’ does. Moreover, by applying the term ‘my lord’ to the christian God or to Jesus of the Church, the theologians have made it practically impossible to use the term for anybody else. Which of course, is what this article is about.

The NIV writes in a study note on verse 14 that my Lord is “a term of respect for a superior.” So seemingly the scribes understand what I have outlined above. Yet they don’t quite grasp it. For the issue is not showing respect, but submission. Y’hoshua ben Hun places himself under the commander’s authority.

In the next sentence in the study note section, directly below the comment on verse 14, the NIV theologians then print this on verse 15: “Joshua is commissioned to undertake the Lord’s battles for Canaan.”

Not only have the theologians and bible translators committed egregious crimes by deleting YHWH’s name from his own books, they have compounded their sabotage by a completely illogical and incoherent use of the word ‘Lord’ which they used as substitute for that name.

They declined from using the word ‘Lord’ exclusively to address YHWH and instead maintain the use of that same word to refer to others, but in such a way that it is not clear to the reader which ‘Lord’ refers to whom in passages where more than one person is called ‘Lord.’ And they exacerbate their foolishness with warped ‘explanations’ in footnotes and study notes.

So this is what you must know about the New International Version of the bible.

• In the text of the christian bible, YHWH’s name is replaced by the word LORD, which is also sometimes written as Lord.
• In the text of the bible, the LORD’s commander is a Lord.
• In a footnote to the text, the scribes admit that they could also have used ‘lord’ without initial capital for the commander. But they didn’t.
• In a study note to the same verse, the theologians explain that ‘my Lord’ is a term of respect for a superior, but showing respect is not what this verse is about. Nor is the bible, as a matter of fact². Showing respect is an issue for the Chicago maffia and Detroit gang members.
• In a study note on the following verse, the scribes of the NIV again use the word ‘Lord’, but now it refers to YHWH again, whom they call “LORD” in the text, but “Lord” in the footnotes and study notes that ‘explain’ those verses. The spelling of the word ‘Lord’ refers to YHWH’s commander in the text, but to YHWH himself in the explanatory study notes.
• Whenever this bible is read from a pulpit, not a single church-goer can hear the difference between all these different spellings. No-one who hears the text can know who is who.

In verse 14 the word ‘Lord’ refers to a commander of an army and in verse 15, which describes battles, the exact same word, in the exact same spelling, with the exact same capitalization, nevertheless does not refer to the commander of an army but to YHWH.

In the NIV study notes, on verse 14 the theologians write that my Lord is a term of respect which Y’hoshua ben Hun employs to address the commander of the army, and on verse 15 they explain that Y’hoshua is commissioned to undertake the Lord’s battles, but the word ‘Lord’ in verse 15 does not refer to the same person whom he called ‘Lord’ in verse 14.

The NIV is a project of theologians. It is a bible made by people who doubt the word of YHWH, who can’t be bothered to honour his name, who obfuscate the clear meaning of the word of YHWH and who thus serve their master the devil.

Geneva bible

The NIV stands in a long tradition of theologians and bible translators who distort the bible in order to make it say what they want it to say. More than four hundred years ago, at the time of the reformers, the 1599 Geneva Bible had this to say on Joshua 5:14,

And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and {g} did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?

And then in a margin note, this bible ‘explains’ what it means that Joshua fell down in worship:

{g} In that Joshua worships him, he acknowledges him to be God: and in that he calls himself the Lord’s captain he declares himself to be Christ.

So the commander of YHWH’s army was Jesus Christ. Which, of course, is total nonsense, but the theologians who compiled the Geneva Bible held to the doctrine that the Lord’s captain can only be the Lord.

Conclusion

There are many more examples I could give you about the rubbish that theologians and bible translators produce as a result of their stubborn refusal to honour YHWH and Y’hoshua by using their proper names. They are intent on confusing YHWH and Y’hoshua at every opportunity, for this is their backhanded way of asserting that they are both Lord, and therefore must both be God.

Everyone understands that when two persons have different names, they must be different persons. So one of the tasks which the theologians have been given by their taskmaster the devil, is to removing those names and calling them both Lord, thereby erasing the ability to clearly distinguish between them.

And I have made it my task on earth to expose the lies of those theologians.

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