John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his 'one and only' Son, (unique Son) that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
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That word occurs 9 times in the New Testament each time referring to a unique or only child except one in John 1:14 that I believe is simply calling the Son, God.
Luke 7:12 - only son
Luke 8:42 - only daughter
Luke 9:38 - only child
John 1:14 - only Son
John 3:18 - only Son
Hebrews 11:17 - only son
1 John 4:9 - only Son
I make this point because the Hebrew equivalent is translated the same way.
Genesis 22:2 - only son
Proverbs 4:3 - only one (in the sight of my mother)
Jeremiah 6:26 - only son
Amos 8:10 - only son
Zechariah 12:10 - only child
Judges 11:34 - only child
BUT! when we get to the book of Psalms it translates the 4 times it is used as life, lonely, precious, and solitary... what? clearly there is a sense in which this word has the meaning of a unique child everywhere else, did the Psalmist just discard that meaning?
Read Psalm 22 and you see that David is describing in some prophetic sense the death of Jesus or at least Jesus pics up on that when he cries "my God my God why have you forsaken me" (check out a previous post for more info on that). He says in verse 20
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious soul from the power of the dog!
The word they translate precious is everywhere else translated 'only child'. Interesting.
Again in Psalm 25 another Psalm of David, it says in verse 16
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
Again this word lonely is everywhere outside of Psalms translated 'only' or 'unique child'. So maybe it just has that distant meaning but what an interesting place to find this word show up. It's almost as if we don't have a category in the Psalms for a picture of a coming unique Son of God.
I don't know what to do with this yet and I am no language scholar so I guess I'm left with wondering about this unique word's usage in the Psalms.
