The Treasury Had a Fake Coin

Yesterday I discovered (well, really more like witnessed) how someone, even when only using the Bible, can make some rather interesting mistakes. I also learned not to rely too heavily on man, although there are many very reliable men we can learn from. I also (re)learned the importance of context.

I've been going through The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, a giant book of about 500,000 cross references. I found myself in Genesis 1:2 (it's been slow going, but Lord willing I have the rest of my life to finish). That verse is as follows: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (ESV). Alongside the word "Spirit," there was a reference to Job 26:14:

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways,
and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
But the thunder of his power who can understand?

Do you see any reference to the Spirit in there? I didn't. I looked up a few words in the Srong's Concordance I had handy and found nothing in the original Hebrew. I finally wrote down that I had no idea why there was a reference to this verse here and speculated that maybe the reference to "whisper" had something to do with the Spirit, or how the Spirit has thundering power or something.

Knowing that The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge was based off of a commentary, I decided to find out which one. It turned out to be the Rev. Thomas Scott's Commentary on the Whole Bible. Surprisingly, however, I couldn't find it anywhere, at least not the Old Testament portion of it. I kept finding Matthew Henry's commentary though, and I finally decided to check it out. I skimmed through it to find the verse references in the section about Genesis 1:2-3 and I found a reference to this verse:

By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. (Job 26:13 KJV)

One verse earlier. One verse earlier. Had I only looked one verse earlier I probably would have caught it. The Treasury referred to Job 26:14. The real reference was probably supposed to be Job 26:13. I looked up the ESV version, which replaces the word "wind" for "spirit," but the Bible regularly refers to the Spirit as a wind, so I probably would have caught that reference too.

This is supposed to be a corrected version of this. But I can't really blame them. When you're trying to sell a product, do you really have time to go through 500,000 cross references?

Note to self: next time, if I find a discrepancy like this, look around. It may be a mistake.