Find fault (3201) memphomai by Greek Word Studies

Find fault (3201) (memphomai ) means to blame, to censure, to accuse, to be dissatisfied with someone most commonly due to errors of omission. Impute as blameworthy. TDNT - means “to blame,” “to scold,” “to upbraid,”...“to chide,” “to reproach,”...to declare oneself dissatisfied with something,” NIDNTT - In Ro. 9:19 the word is used by Paul in a rhetorical question that occurs in an exposition of the sovereignty of God: “Why does He yet find fault?” In the light of God’s sovereign inexorable purposes one may raise the question of human responsibility. The word memphomai clearly connotes “guilt” or blameworthiness in this context for Paul’s argument is that God’s sovereignty does not free sinful men of fault or guilt before God. Webster - censure - : the act of blaming or condemning sternly. The act of blaming or finding fault and condemning as wrong; applicable to the moral conduct, or to the works of men. When applied to persons, it is nearly equivalent to blame, reproof, reprehension, reprimand. It is an expression of disapprobation, which often implies reproof. Webster - blame - to find fault with; to express disapprobation of; to find fault with; opposed to praise or commend, and applicable most properly to persons, but applied also to things. The only other NT use of memphomai is Hebrews 8:8 (apocryphal Lxx uses - 2Macc 2:7, Sir 11:7, Sir 41:7)... For (see term of explanation - which forces you to observe Heb 8:6-7) finding fault with them, He says, “BEHOLD, DAYS ARE COMING, SAYS THE LORD, WHEN I WILL EFFECT A NEW COVENANT WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AND WITH THE HOUSE OF JUDAH; Warren Wiersbe tells the following story: "I recall sharing in a street meeting in Chicago and passing out tracts at the corner of Madison and Kedzie. Most of the people graciously accepted the tracts, but one man took the tract and with a snarl crumpled it up and threw it in the gutter. The name of the tract was “Four Things God Wants You to Know.” “There are a few things I would like God to know!” the man said. “Why is there so much sorrow and tragedy in this world? Why do the innocent suffer while the rich go free? Bah! Don’t tell me there’s a God! If there is, then God is the biggest sinner that ever lived!” And he turned away with a sneer and was lost in the crowd." Wuest - (Ro 9:19–21) “Hath resisted” is the perfect tense verb of anthistēmi, “to set one’s self against, to withstand, resist, oppose.” The simple verb is histēmi, “to stand,” the prefixed preposition, anti, “against,” thus, “to stand against.” The use of the perfect tense here speaks of a process of standing against God’s will which has come to a finished end, and the resulting state, that of a confirmed and permanent stand against God. Vincent says; “more correctly, withstandeth. The idea is the result rather than the process of resistance. A man may resist God’s will, but cannot maintain his resistance. The question means who can resist Him? Paul leaves the question unanswered, for there is no answer which a finite mind can either reason out nor understand, since it involves the sovereignty of God and the fact of man as a free moral agent. The point where both of these touch each other has never been found by man.” (Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader) Denney - But human nature is not so easily silenced. This interpretation of all human life, with all its diversities of character and experience, through the will of God alone, as if that will by itself explained everything, is not adequate to the facts. If Moses and Pharaoh alike are to be explained by reference to that will—that is, are to be explained in precisely the same way—then the difference between Moses and Pharaoh disappears. The moral interpretation of the world is annulled by the religious one. If God is equally behind the most opposite moral phenomena, then it is open to anyone to say, what Paul here anticipates will be said; why does He still find fault? For who withstands His resolve? To this objection there is really no answer, and it ought to be frankly admitted that the apostle does not answer it. The attempt to understand the relation between the human will and the divine seems to lead of necessity to an antinomy (the opposition of one law to another) which thought has not yet succeeded in transcending. To assert the absoluteness of God in the unexplained, unqualified sense of Ro 9:18 makes the moral life unintelligible; but to explain the moral life by ascribing to man a freedom over against God reduces the universe to anarchy. Up to this point Paul has been insisting on the former point of view, and he insists on it still as against the human presumption which would plead its rights against God; but in the very act of doing so he passes over (in Ro 9:22) to an intermediate standpoint, showing that God has not in point of fact acted arbitrarily, in a freedom uncontrolled by moral law; and from that again he advances in the following chapter to do full justice to the other side of the antinomy—the liberty and responsibility of man. The act of Israel, as well as the will of God, lies behind the painful situation he is trying to understand. (Expositor's Greek Testament)

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Find fault (3201) memphomai

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