verbs and other important words in every spoken sentence receive a tiny amount of stress as they are uttered.
| Stress | |
|---|---|
| ˈ◌ | |
| IPA number | 501 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | ˈ |
| Unicode (hex) | U+02C8 |
[source]
| |
try this one: i couldn't finish the project because i was too ill. invariably the most operative words receive a tiny bit of stress. i couldn't finish the project because i was too ill. it's really tiny, but it's there (and this tiny linguistic necessity is not, i imagine, what bonhoeffer was talking about when he calls God's people to refrain from adding tones and dramatism to the readings of God's word. rather i mean the little intonations that keep us from sounding like robots).so anyway, we often read romans iv like this:
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
it's like the stress pattern is saying that abraham believed the true God (as opposed to a pagan god - like the ones he presumably was converted from); and this was credited to him as righteousness (as opposed to something else like holiness or goodness) - there's no problem with such a statement either... but why would it be said?after asking this question, it jumped out at me this month in another way:
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
and suddenly the whole chapter made so much more sense.
believed, as opposed to doubted - because he was as good as dead and still had no descendent to carry out God's promise of making him into a nation (into "many nations" for that matter); and righteousness was credited as opposed to earned - which is what the whole chapter is talking about in relation to his faith......and in relation to ours who believe!!
The words “it was credited to him”
were written not for him alone, but also for
us, to whom God will credit
righteousness—
for us who
believe in him who
raised Jesus our Lord
from the dead.
(romans iv 23-24,
niv translation)