The "Wicked Bible"

As the President of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green has accumulated quite a fortune. One of the ways he uses it (apart from his charitable projects) is building the Green Collection – which includes more than 30,000 biblical manuscripts and artifacts. Many of the manuscripts are quite ancient, including some pieces of the Dead Sea scrolls.
One ancient manuscript is called the “Wicked Bible” because of the one word it is missing; the word “not”. Printed in 1631, this Bible mistakenly omitted the crucial word in its listing of the 10 Commandments, so that it reads “Thou shall commit adultery”. Hmmm.. I wonder why that one word was left out of that one commandment? Of all the words that could be left out of a massive number of verses, that’s the one the printer left out?
It got me to thinking about the way we read the Bible today, and what we might leave out. How many times do we subconsciously edit the Bible so that it says what we want it to say? (How many live by the words “You can serve God and Money”?)
When the Bible says something we feel uncomfortable with, it is good to remember how glad we are that the promises of God are written as they are. And that whatever it says that might make us feel uncomfortable actually has a great “upside” when we follow it.
The “Wicked Bible” might be a valuable piece for a collection of rare manuscripts, but the Bible as written is actually a lot more precious!