Dictionaries :: Reason; Reasonable; Reasoning

International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia

Reason; Reasonable; Reasoning:

re'-z'n, re'-z'n-a-b'l, re'-z'n-ing (yakhach, etc.; logos, dialogizomai, -ismos, etc.): "Reason" with related terms, has a diversity of meanings, representing a large number of Hebrew and Greek words and phrases. In the sense of "cause" or "occasion" it stands in 1Ki 9:15 for dabhar, "a word" (the Revised Version margin "account"), but in most cases renders prepositional forms as "from," "with," "because of," "for the sake," etc. As the ground or argument for anything, it is the translation of ta‘am (Pr 26:16, the Revised Version margin "answers discreetly"), of yakhach, as in Isa 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together" (compare Job 13:3; 15:3); in 1Sa 12:7, the word is shaphaT, the Revised Version (British and American) "that I may plead," etc. The principal Greek words for "reason," "reasoning," are those given above. The Christian believer is to be ready to give a reason (logos) for the hope that is in him (1Pe 3:15 the King James Version). "Reason" as a human faculty or in the abstract sense appears in Apocrypha in The Wisdom of Solomon 17:12 (logismos); Ecclesiasticus 37:16, "Let reason (logos) go before every enterprise," the Revised Version (British and American) "be the beginning of every work." In Ac 18:14, "reason would" is literally, kata logon, "according to reason"; in Ro 12:1, for "reasonable (logikos) service," the Revised Version (British and American) has "spiritual," and in the margin "Greek ‘belonging to the reason.' " In the Revised Version (British and American) "reason," etc., occurs much oftener than in the King James Version (compare Le 17:11; De 28:47; Jud 5:22; Job 20:2; 23:7, etc.; Lu 3:15; 12:17; Ac 17:17, etc.).

Written by W. L. Walker