To persons who obtain a very slight knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, many of the idioms of these languages are a constant puzzle. One of the first things to learn about a foreign tongue, whether ancient or modern, is its distinctive differences, or rather the many distinctive differences, from our own. Every language has some peculiarities, called idioms, and the reader who, regardless of these, tries to read them as if written in his own tongue, will be in constant confusion. Now, one of the idioms of the Hebrew, an idiom which clings to Hebrew writers even when they are writing in other tongues, is a use of the plural number quite different from our own. It is known to most Bible readers, for instance, that the Hebrew name translated God is plural in form, though when applied to the true God it always has the force of the singular. So the word translated week has the plural form with the idea of a unit. This fact enables us to answer the following query: "Does the word 'week.,' in Acts 20:7, come from a singular or a plural word in the Greek? If plural, why is it translated singular?" It is plural; but it is translated by a word in the singular because it means precisely what we do by the word "week." Everywhere that the word "week" occurs in our English New Testament, the same is true. In every such instance the word preceded by the word "day," expressed or understood in the Greek, and the word [306] "day" is accompanied by a numeral. It so happens in the New Testament that the numeral is in every instance first; and in all these instances the numeral is expressed, and the word "day" left to be understood.

      I remember that this last circumstance once led a very acute friend of mine, who knew just a little of Greek, into a singular notion about the resurrection of Jesus. He observed that in the accounts of the resurrection in all four of the Gospels the word rendered "week" is sabbatoon, the word for Sabbath in the genitive plural, and he thought it ought to be rendered Sabbaths. Then, from the clause, "on the first of the sabbaths," he wondered if Jesus, after all, did not rise on the Sabbath instead of Sunday. Just a little more knowledge of Greek would have taught him that Greek numerals, and all Greek adjectives, have gender agreeing with that of the nouns to which they belong, and that the word "first" is in the feminine gender, agreeing with day understood, while the word for Sabbath (sabbatoon) is neuter. The meaning, could not therefore be, as he thought, the first Sabbath of the Sabbaths, but the first day of the week. Moreover, "the first of the Sabbaths" would convey no meaning unless it referred to a series of Sabbaths like that between the Passover and Pentecost, and to this the context makes no allusion.

      The propriety of using a plural number in this instance is apparent if we reflect that the conception of a week has in it a plural idea, that of a series of seven days. It was not an arbitrary custom, then, which led the Hebrews to use for it a word in the plural number, but it is rather an anomaly with us to use a word in the singular number to represent seven days. We can not be too careful to remember the differences of idiom between our language and those of the sacred writers. [307]

[SEBC 306-307]