Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 22 Dec. 2019
Omitting greyed-out text should bring presentation time down around 45 minutes.
Several Christmases ago, I read an editorial – I think it was from Joel Belz in World Magazine – about a cryptic comment he heard from a nursing home resident. His initial assumption was that the elderly gentleman was suffering from a confused mind, muttering something about “forms bending low,” but then he remembered where he had heard that phrase before. It was a verse from “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear”: “And ye, beneath life's crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way With painful steps and slow...” The old man in the nursing home was saying, in effect, “That’s me!”
You too may be saying, “That’s me!” My form is bending low beneath life’s crushing load. I can’t do this anymore. I know I’m supposed to smile and say, “Fine” when people ask me how I’m doing, but really, I’m not doing o.k.
The author of that Christmas song, Edmund Sears, was a Unitarian, so he had no Gospel message to offer besides an exhortation from angels to men to be more peaceable toward each other. “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear” has the distinction of being one of the only Christmas carols that never mentions Jesus. The Civil War that erupted a decade later followed by two World Wars, and now our current engagement in what seems to be an endless war makes Sears’ solution of people just being nicer to each other ring really hollow.
Well, perhaps the grocery-counter magazines and retail catalogues and the advertisements inbetween songs and movies have what we’re looking for:
Is life’s load crushing you? Just hire this convenient service and your life will be easy!
Is your form bending low? Try a new relationship and add spice to your life!
Are your steps painful? Buy this health product and you will feel young and happy again!
Somehow, Madison Avenue makes those lies seem awfully believable, but our experience tells us that we’ve tried these things before and they definitely were not the solution. You are not a “material girl living in a material world” as Madonna put it. Your soul is spiritual and you can only be satisfied in a right relationship with the personal, spiritual God.
But if you’re going to have a relationship with a personal God, that God is going to have a will of His own that you have to come to terms with. He values certain things; He has certain goals, and, as we have seen in the book of Hebrews, it is His will and strategy not only to choose to associate with undeserving sinners, but also to train those He chooses, using various disciplines that mirror the relationship between parents and children to prepare us to thrive in the eternal life ahead of us with Him.
So, as we’ve noted before, trusting Jesus will mean moving into some difficult situations in this life. We’re going to come up against frustrations, frightening situations, and painful losses as part of God’s training process for us. That’s what the Christians in the New Testament were experiencing too, and that’s why the book of Hebrews was written.
When it gets hard, our temptation is to quit trusting Jesus and just follow the crowd down the wide, easy path that leads to destruction. We need to be reminded to keep trusting God – and to encourage our brothers and sisters in the faith to keep trusting Jesus.
This is the setting for Hebrews 12:12-13, which introduces two commands “to strengthen limp hands” and “make straight paths” with the word “Wherefore/therefore...
What is it that makes our hands hang down weakly at our sides? (Usually a sigh goes along with that, and the need to sit down or even lie down.) It is dismay. It is the feeling that there is no hope; your expectations have been disappointed, and you’re at a dead end.
Some of us are feeling that way right now.
We’ve tried hard to keep a stiff upper lip, tried to do what’s right, but now it feels like, “What’s the use?”
We were excited and hopeful about certain relationships but those dreams were dashed and you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to trust or love again.
Maybe you had a big vision and thought God was going to do something special, and then it all fell apart, and God passed you by.
The followers of Jesus after His resurrection and ascension into heaven probably experienced a lot of those feelings.
Jesus had brought an exciting, fresh interpretation of the Scriptures, but the Rabbis had since explained that Jesus was on the wrong side of history, and His teachings didn’t seem so appealing any more.
They thought Jesus was the Lord of Lords, but the way that Christians were being persecuted brought into question whether Jesus was really in control as Lord after all.
Jesus had talked about starting a new kingdom and making everything right, but the same old corrupt Roman leaders were in power, and no reform was in sight.
To counter those notes of dismay, the apostle quotes from the Hebrew text of Isaiah 35:3 “Strengthen the drooping hands and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to the hasty of heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear, see your God! Vengeance will come – God's payback! He Himself will come, and He will save you.’ 5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped, 6 Then the lame will leap like the stag...” (NAW)
What is the similarity between the people of Isaiah’s day and the people of the first-century church which led this apostle to use the same exhortation which the prophet Isaiah had used some seven hundred years before?
For Isaiah:
It was a time of political instability: Syria and Israel had formed an alliance to conquer Judah, then Judah hired the Assyrians to conquer Syria and Israel, so Israel tried to get Egypt to come fight Assyria. Israel lost the deal and got destroyed, leaving only Judea standing.
It was also a time of religious compromise: In Isaiah’s day, King Ahaz refused to ask God for help. He took all the furniture out of the temple in Jerusalem and gave it to the king of Assyria, then the high priest in Jerusalem built a new altar in the temple to imitate a pagan altar that was popular in Damascus, and the people of God worshipped idols on every hill.
Into this context of uncertainty and compromise, Isaiah spoke God’s encouragement to his people, saying, “Strengthen the drooping hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to the hasty of heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear, behold your God… Himself will come, and He will save you.”
Joshua 1:9 uses the same command: “Be strong and courageous (firm). Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."
Now, when it says “be strong/start strengthening/lift up,” this is not the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps kind of “macho” strong. This is tapping into a much greater power than anything human.
Isaiah already admitted in chapter 33 (v.23) that God’s people don’t have strength in-and-of themselves,
rather Isaiah affirmed time and again that God is the source of their strength, for instance in Isaiah 41:10 “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you; I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.” cf. 22:21, 27:5)
We see the same principle in the New Testament in Eph. 6:10 “be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.” – God is where strength comes from!
Originally, these words about what dismay does to our hands and our knees, came from Job chapter 4, where the means of strengthening hands and knees is made clear, and that is through words of encouragement:
“...thou hast instructed many, and hast strengthened the hands of the weak one, and hast supported the failing with words, and hast imparted courage to feeble knees” (Job 4:3-4, Brenton1).
Knowing the original context of these words gives us a clue as to how we can go about strengthening “drooping hands” and “weak knees” for those “whose forms are bending low:” we are to use words that bring courage and strength.
What words of encouragement are the apostle recommending? In the passage in Isaiah 35, which is referenced by Hebrews 12:12, Isaiah pointed his people to the miracles that the Messiah would do, namely, to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and the ability to walk to the lame. By quoting from Isaiah 35, the apostle is pointing the church in the same direction, reminding them – despite the disparagements of the unbelieving Jews around them – that Jesus did the very miracles2 predicted by Isaiah, so He must be the true Messiah, and He will “save us!”
“At a time when it seems all is lost, [we should call] to mind the ancient promises of God and look to the future when He will accomplish His redemption... One can only have this attitude when he realizes that the God who had been with Joshua is also at all times with His people.” (E. J.Young, The Book Of Isaiah, commentary on ch. 35)
In the Apostle’s time in the New Testament:
It was also a time of political instability: tension was high, with Zealots trying to start national independence movements, with the instability of Israel being a border state between the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire – and all the friction that came with that, and then there was the fact that the Roman army was mobilizing a military offensive to wipe Israel off the map, which they did shortly after the book of Hebrews was written and delivered.
Furthermore, religious compromise was a huge problem in the Apostle’s day, just like it was in Isaiah’s day: the religious leaders in Jerusalem were doing their best to please the pagan Roman kings. When they crucified Jesus, they said it was because they wouldn’t tolerate Jesus trying to usurp Caesar. The priests were corrupted by greed for money and power, as Jesus made clear in His woes upon them. They followed traditions of man and did not fear God. As a result, instead of embracing Jesus as their Messiah, they began persecuting followers of Jesus.
Into this context of uncertainty and compromise, the apostle wrote to his people in the book of Hebrews: “Yes I know that persecution is heating up for you, but this is just part of God’s training process for His children. Y’all must strengthen the drooping hands and the feeble knees, and y’all must start making straight paths with your feet.”
And what about us in our time?
We have our share of political tensions too. It seems that the polarity between the two most powerful political parties just keeps increasing, and we’re seeing things building up that parallel the kind of tensions which led up to the Civil War and the World Wars, and we wonder if it’s going to all explode again in our lifetime. Taxes and inflation are at crisis-high levels so that the average man can’t provide for his family anymore with a 40-hour a week job, and families are falling apart.
And boy, do we live in an age of religious compromise!
Protestants used to denounce the Humanism that had crept into that church – even when it meant the Catholics or Anglicans would put them to death over it, but now Protestants are out-doing Catholics in their haste to get rid of the Bible and worship men.
And when it comes to evangelism, Government money has eviscerated Gospel-preaching from our missions, and, mark my words, with the advent of a 988 federal suicide hotline, the hope of Christianity, which is the most important factor in preventing suicide, will quickly become illegal to talk about in all suicide counseling.
In the world of entertainment, it used to be that no Hollywood actor would dare say a bad word or do anything on-screen which might offend Christians, but now the average American hasn’t even heard anything positive about Christianity for a generation. Now, Christians are afraid of losing their media platforms, so they’re falling all over ourselves to fit in with the latest anti-Christian terminology. Others live with the stigma of a government-imposed warning on the front page of their website that they are a hate group.
Into our context, God’s word still speaks through the prophet and the apostle:
“Behold your God” (Isa. 35); “keep your eyes fixed on Jesus” (Heb. 12:2)!
Keep putting the truth of His word into your mind so that His promises give you hope to fight dismay. Remember your destination: read about heaven in the Bible, think about it, and talk about it!
Lift those drooping hands up to God in prayer and ask Him for strength, trusting Him to enable your feeble limbs to keep walking in His paths.
The figurative and literal hands are necessarily linked, for as faith is inspired and resolve to act is renewed, so literal hands will also be set to meaningful work.
Although the NIV and ESV limit the hands to be strengthened to your own hands, the word “your” is not explicitly there in the original Greek. Furthermore, the imperative is active voice “y’all must restore,” not middle voice “restore yourself.” And, as the chapter progresses, we see that we are to strengthen any brother’s or sister’s weak faith, not just our own.
This is elaborated in the next verse which introduces the second command to God’s people in the midst of dismaying circumstances:
Our apostle interrupts his exhortation from Isaiah 35 to quote the Greek text of Proverbs 4:26 almost word-for-word: "Make straight paths for thy feet, and order thy ways aright. Turn not aside to the right hand nor to the left, but turn away thy foot from an evil way... My son, attend to my wisdom, and apply thine ear to my words." (Brenton)
What does it mean to make “straight paths” for your feet?
The book of Proverbs holds about three-quarters of the uses of the Greek word for “straight” in the Greek Bible – and 100% of all the other uses of the Greek word for “paths,” so what do the Proverbs say about making “straight paths”?
In Prov. 4:11, the wise father says, "I teach thee the ways of wisdom; and I cause thee to go in right paths…” (Brenton) Notice that the parallel phrase is to “teach... wisdom.”
In Proverbs 8:6-9, Lady Wisdom speaks, saying, "Hearken to me; for I will speak solemn truths; and will produce right sayings from my lips. For my [voicebox] shall [repeat] truth; and false lips are an abomination before me. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing in them wrong or perverse. They are all evident to those that understand, and right to those that find knowledge." (Brenton) Once again, what is right (orthodox) is the spoken truth.
And then in Proverbs 11:5-6 (and many other places), anyone who thinks and speaks truth as defined by God in His wisdom, is called "upright" ("The thoughts of the righteous are true judgments; but ungodly men devise deceits. The words of ungodly men are crafty; but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them." ~Brenton)
Consistently what is "right," then, is God’s words (e.g. 16:13), and it is thinking and speaking which lines up with God’s words that leads to right conduct (21:8).
Therefore to “make straight/upright paths” is to fill your mind with God’s word so that you aren’t fooled3 into following the world around you when they take the way that “seems right” but which “ends in death” (Proverbs 14:12/16:25).
To “make straight paths” is to use God’s word as your ruler for determining what is right rather than the wonky rubber yardsticks that the world uses to do gymnastics around their favorite sins.
To “make straight paths” is to fill your heart with God’s word so that what comes out in your thoughts and words and actions is consistent with God’s own character.
Now, our apostle picks up in Isaiah 35 again with the second half of Hebrews 12:13, because Isaiah prophecied that at the coming of the Messiah, the lame would leap and not be left out.
The law in Leviticus 21:18, however, said that cripples weren’t allowed to come near to God in the temple worship.
Jesus set the standard for Christian behavior by not leaving behind the spiritually weak, but rather healing the sick and causing the cripples to walk so that they could walk right into the worship of God like everybody else!
The goal at the end of v.13 is to heal that which is crippled so that it doesn’t veer off-track.
Note that the word for “crippled/lame” is not an adjective for the “feet” in the first half of the verse because it does not match in gender or number. This is yet another reason why I think that this is talking about helping other people overcome obstacles to faith in Jesus.4
Paul's letters to Timothy contain the only other references in the New Testament5 to this verb ἐκτραπῇ/veer away/be turned out/dislocated6. In the introduction and conclusion to 1 Timothy, Paul explains that "turning/veering aside"
is "straying" from "love from a pure heart from a good conscience and from sincere faith" into "idle talk" of "fables and endless genealogies" in the "law" (1 Tim. 1:6) -
"profane & idle babblings & contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge" (6:20),
and that "turning aside" is a switching of allegiance from Jesus to "Satan" (5:15).
In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he uses the verb one more time to describe "turning their ears away from the truth...unto fables" (the truth being the "gospel" and "sound doctrine” ~2 Tim. 4:3-5, NKJV).
This sheds light on what it means figuratively for a crippled person not to be caused to veer off: it is to help him or her get a better grip on what is true so that falsehood doesn’t sound attractive.
First century fence-riders who had some interest in Christianity but who had become somewhat uncommitted to the faith and frightened by the persecution they might face needed to be reminded of the good news of Jesus and of the sound doctrine of the Bible to keep them from getting sidetracked into the labyrinth of rabbinical speculations and the Satanic preoccupation with untrue stories.
In our time and place, apologetics are needed to combat the attraction of atheism. I was just reading an article by a church pastor doing just that, debunking a patently false National Geographic headline claiming "fossil dinosaur feathers found near the South Pole” - when all that was found was fossil feathers that had dropped from ordinary birds in Australia7. Helping folks who don’t know any better to discover that scientific observation has never proved Atheists’ explanations of origins and that the data actually support the Biblical account of creation is one way to protect those who are influencable by falsehood.
Here’s an application for the Christmas season: Are we telling the true story of Christmas to our children and grandchildren that makes the gospel clear, or are we passing on the untrue story concocted by non-Christians to replace the gospel (the one that says that you can be “naughty” or “nice” if you want to be, and if you are a nice enough person you’ll get stuff from somebody)?
If Christmas is about nothing more than gifts and decorations and fuzzy feelings, the minute one of those things becomes disappointing (and how how easily they disappoint!), your hands are hanging limp and you are sighing again.
But if Christmas is about God coming to us “to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray,” then there is “comfort and joy” that will never go away!
The goal of “healing” that comes from returning to God’s truth for strength further bears this point out, for although the word “heal” is sometimes used merely to speak of getting well from a sickness, healing is consistently portrayed throughout Scripture as forgiveness of sins being granted by God and ultimately salvation from hell. I believe that this spiritual healing is what is in view here in Hebrews 12:13. Consider:
2 Chronicles 7:14 "if my people, on whom my name is called, should repent, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, I also will hear from heaven, and I will be merciful to their sins, and I will heal their land." (Brenton)
Psalm 30:2-3 “O Lord my God, I cried to thee, and thou didst heal me. O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades, thou hast delivered me from among them that go down to the pit.”
Ps. 41:4 “O Lord, have mercy upon me; heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee."8
Hosea 6:3-4 “After two days he will heal us: in the third day we shall arise, and live before him, and shall know him: let us follow on to know the Lord”
Isaiah 6:10 “...their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them."
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was wounded on account of our sins, and was bruised because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his bruises we were healed."
Isaiah 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind;"
1 Peter 2:24 “He Himself ‘carried our sins’ in His body upon the tree, in order that we might live in His righteousness after dying to our sins, of Whom [it was written] ‘by His stripes y'all were healed.’"
As we accept the truth of the gospel that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, we are healed from our sin and fortified against going astray, and we are able to stand and lift our hands to God in hope and prayer, and not just our own hands, but also the hands of our brothers and sisters who are facing similar temptations to stop trusting Jesus.
“Many would be willing to profess their faith, but as they fear persecution... as they see that troubles, and those many, are prepared for them, they rest idly with their hands as it were folded… [W]e ought to walk prudently and to keep to a straight course; for indiscreet ardor is no less an evil than inactivity and softness... [T]his straightness of the way... is preserved when a man’s mind is superior to every fear and regards only what God approves, for fear is ever very ingenious in finding out byways... [E]very one who has prepared himself to endure evils, goes on in a straight way wheresoever the Lord calls him.” ~John Calvin
The prospect of difficulties should not lead us into idle avoidance of doing anything for the Lord, rather the promise of training from God and the prospect of the blessed fruits of peace and righteousness give us motivation to lean into the hardships with eager expectation of good results.
So let us “encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thess. 5:11).
We have the missing piece that Edmund Sears did not have when he wrote “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear.” To his quote of the corporate announcement of the angels (“peace on earth good will to men”) we append the rest of the angel’s message: “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:11-12, NKJV)
It is become a sort of tradition of mine to quote Robert Southwell’s Christmas poem in my Christmas sermons, and, once again this Christmas, I can think of no better way to illustrate how to speak true words to inspire the faith of believers in the face of dismaying circumstances than this poem:
This little Babe, so few days old is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at His presence quake, though He himself for cold do shake,
For in this weak unarmed wise, the gates of hell He will surprise…
His camp is pitched in a stall, His bulwark but a broken wall
The crib his trench, haystalks His stakes, of shepherds He His muster makes,
And thus as sure His foe to wound, the angels’ trumps alarum sound.
My soul with Christ join in the fight; stick to the tents that He hath pight;
Within His crib is surest ward, this little Babe will be thy guard;
If thou will foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly boy!
Greek NT |
NAW |
KJV |
11 πᾶσα δὲ παιδεία πρὸς μὲν τὸ παρὸνB οὐ δοκεῖ χαρᾶς εἶναι, ἀλλὰ λύπης, ὕστερον δὲ καρπὸν εἰρηνικὸνC τοῖς δι᾿ αὐτῆς γεγυμνασμένοις ἀποδίδωσι δικαιοσύνης. |
11 So, every training-event for the duration doesn’t seem to be a joy (but rather a grief!), yet afterward, it pays back the peaceful fruit of righteousness to the ones who have been exercised by it. |
11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. |
12 Διὸ τὰςD παρειμένας χεῖρας καὶ τὰ παραλελυμένα γόνατα ἀνορθώσατεE, |
12 So, “Y’all must start strengthening the drooping hands and the feeble knees,” |
12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; |
13 καὶ τροχιὰςF ὀρθὰς ποιήσατεG τοῖς ποσὶν ὑμῶν, ἵνα μὴ τὸ χωλὸν ἐκτραπῇ, ἰαθῇ δὲ μᾶλλον. |
13 and y’all must start “making straight paths with your feet” in order that the crippled might not veer away but rather be healed. |
13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that [which is] lame be turned out [of the way]; but [let] it rather be healed. |
1Although the words for “hands” and “knees” are the same, the adjectives and verbs are slightly different. The three verbs in the LXX are παρεκάλεσας...ἐξανέστησας... περιέθηκας, whereas the verb in Heb. 12:12 is ἀνορθώσατε. The adjectives ἀσθενοῦς and ἀδυνατοῦσιν in Job are replaced with the synonyms παρειμένας and παραλελυμένα in Heb.
2SIGHT TO BLIND; HEARING TO DEAF: Mt. 11:5/Lk 7:22, Mt. 15:31, LAME WALK: Acts 3:8, 8:7, 14:10; DUMB SPEAK: Mat. 9:32-33; 12:22; 15:30-31; Mark 7:37; 9:17-25; Luke 1:22; 11:14
3Chrysostom
put it this way: “‘Walk straight’ ...speaks with
reference to their thoughts; that is to say, not doubting.”
cf. Calvin: “The ways of error and sin are called crooked
paths: see Proverbs 2:15; Isaiah 59:8. So the way of truth and
holiness is compared to a straight line... It is remarkable what the
Apostle says in Galatians 2:14, of Peter and those who dissembled
with him, that they... ‘did not foot straightly [ouk
orthopodousi] according
to the truth of the Gospel;’ they deviated from the straight
line prescribed by the Gospel.”
cf. John Gill: “to
make these paths ‘straight’, is to make the word of God
the rule of walking”
4Calvin noted that this root is used in the LXX to refer to spiritual waywardness: "How long halt ye [χωλανεῖτε] between two opinions?" (1 Ki. 18:21)
5The lone LXX reference being Amos 5:8 "turning night into day" (which is also the lone active voice spelling of this verb in the entire Greek Bible).
6Marvin Vincent P.E. Hughes, and others make the case that this is medical language for dislocation (cf. Hippocrates De Offic. Med. 14).
8cf. Psalm 103:2 and Jeremiah 17:14
AThe
Greek is the Majority text, edited by myself to follow the majority
of the earliest-known manuscripts only when the early manuscript
evidence is practically unanimous. My original document includes
notes on the NKJV, NASB, NIV, & ESV English translations, but
since they are all copyrighted, I cannot include them in my online
document. Underlined words in English versions indicate a
standalone difference from all other English translations of a
certain word. Strikeout usually indicates that the
English translation is, in my opinion, too far outside the range of
meaning of the original Greek word. The addition of an X indicates a
Greek word left untranslated – or a plural Greek word
translated as an English singular. [Brackets] indicate words added
in English not in the Greek. {Pointed Braces} indicate words added
in Greek to the original. Key words are colored consistently across
the chart to show correlations.
BVincent: “Not merely during the present, but for the present regarded as the time in which its application is necessary and salutary. Μὲν indicates that the suffering present is to be offset by a fruitful future - but (δὲ) afterward.”
CThis adjectival form of the word for “peace” only occurs in the N.T. here and in James 3:17. Vincent noted that its use in the Septuagint was in relation to “men, the heart, especially of words and sacrifices.” The phrase “pay back fruit” only occurs here and Rev. 22:2.
DWhile I see this article could be construed as “your” (L&N supplement #92.11a, as per the Syriac and NIV), since it is the object of a second person plural imperative verb, I don’t want to force the pronominal meaning because I see no evidence from the context that this strengthening should be limited only to the “you” addressed in Hebrews. I think it would be appropriately applied to strengthening anyone’s weak faith, not merely our own. (The imperative is active voice “y’all must restore,” not middle voice “restore yourself.”)
EThis is a quote from Isaiah 35:3, though clearly not copied from the LXX (which reads ἰσχύσατε χεῖρες ἀνειμέναι καὶ γόνατα παραλελυμένα). Most of the other 16 occurrences of this verb root in the Greek Bible have to do with the establishment of a ruler in a kingdom: 2 Sam. 7:13, 16; 1 Chr. 17:12, 14, 24; 22:10; Ps. 17:36; 19:9; 144:14; 145:8; Prov. 24:, and Acts 15:16. (Jeremiah, however, uses it to refer to the establishment of the created order by God in 10:12 & 40:2, Ezekiel uses it to describe puberty in 16:7; and Luke uses it to describe the healing of the hunchback woman in 13:13.) The two participles (“drooping” and “feeble”) also occur together in Deut. 32:36. (cf. also Zeph. 3:16.)
FThe only other places this word occurs in the Greek Bible are in the early chapters of Proverbs (2:15; 4:11, 26-27; 5:6, 21), where it always refers to the figurative course of a man’s life rather than to the literal “wheel-track” (Vincent) or “running-lane” (Hughes) on the ground.
GFour manuscripts (two of which are among the oldest-known) spell this verb in the Present tense (ποιειτε – which would match Prov. 4 more closely) instead of in the Aorist tense, so the contemporary critical editions of the GNT spell this word in the Present tense. However, just as many of the oldest-known manuscripts spell the word like the vast majority of Greek manuscripts (and the traditional editions of the GNT) do in the Aorist tense. I see no reason to change the traditional reading based on such tenuous evidence. The previous imperative in the preceding verse is Aorist, and the subsequent imperative in the following verse is Present, so context does not seem to demand that it be one way or another. The only difference in meaning would be that if it’s Aorist (as I have kept it), it might imply that the Hebrews had not been making straight paths for their feet and needed to start doing so now, whereas the Present tense might imply that they had been making straight paths and needed to continue doing so. But English does not have such a nuance in its verb aspects, so all the major English translations are the same, whether KJV & NKJ (which follow the traditional GNT) or NASB and NIV (which follow the more recent critical GNT’s). Although somewhat reminiscent of Isaiah 40:3b (which uses the verb ποιεῖτε), not a single other word matches in the LXX. Proverbs 4:26 matches much more closely if you transpose the first two words, use the verb’s present tense (ποίει), remove the definite article before “feet,” and change the plural “your” to singular (σοῖς).