PUNS IN THE BIBLE
As Part of the series called:
Things That Make You Go H’mmm?

Romans 2:29
“But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.”

The Bible is loaded with "Paronomasia", which is basically a fancy name for a “Pun”. I prefer to call them a “play on words” when I can. Puns range from the simple and funny to the complex and profound. Creating a pun can be as easy as simply comparing two words side by side, which sound alike, but are spelled different, such as: profit vs prophet, these types of words are known as homonyms. Because they are homonyms that type of word play is called a homophone. Homographs are word plays which are spelled the same, but have different meanings. The list of word types and each word types’ associated pun-type goes on.

Having a good understanding of the subject matter is essential to getting the point of a pun. Without a clear understanding puns often slide over our head. I know they do mine, if you look at my picture on another post, you will see this statement is a type of pun also. The very popular social Meme (picture with a phrase, often sent over social media) is more often than not a type of pun. Puns or word plays can be a very effective type of communication, so it should not seem strange that God would use word play to communicate something in the Bible.

If you go back to our first article for this paper, you will see that all these articles are united by the theme of 2 Timothy 2:15, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth”. In order to “rightly divide we must adhere to the first part of Paul’s instruction to Timothy, in that, we should “Study”. I am going to be point blank frank, on this subject, be advised it is not my intent to harm anybody’s sensibility, understanding or feelings. However, we do not get a lot of the puns in the Bible because the homonym sounding of the words is lost in the translation into English. Our theme verse for this article, Romans 2:29 is one example of this, let me explain.

In Genesis 29, when Leah gives birth to a son of Jacob she said, “Now will I praise the Lord: therefore she called his name Judah.” In Genesis 49, Jacob upon his death bed gathers his sons and says: "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee."

The Hebrew word for “praise” transliterates into yadah, pronounced yaw-daw! The Hebrew word for “Judah”, transliterates into yehudah, pronounced yeh-hoo-daw. The pronunciations of both praise and Judah are very similar. Judah originates from another word which means to thank or to give thanks, which is the basis for praise.

Understanding that Judah, from which the word Jew is derived, means praise sheds additional light and places more emphasis on Paul’s statement in Romans 2:29. Placing extra emphasis on what is being said is the entire point of using a PUN!

Think about it!