Take a look at Colossians 3:12.  It says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts…”  Now, a literal translation of compassionate hearts will read a bit differently.  It will actually translate oiktirmou splanchna as “bowels of compassion.”  And that’s not the only place we find this expression in Scripture. I’ll give one further example, but I could give ten more.  In I John 3:17 we read, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” Now, a literal translation would change heart to, you guessed it, bowels (splanchna)!

While rereading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol I recently read something I had forgotten. When Jacob Marley appeared to Scrooge his body was transparent, so that Scrooge could see not only the front of his long deceased partner’s waistcoat but the back of it too!  But then this line appears, “Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.” No bowels?  What is that supposed to mean?

It’s a bit perplexing until you begin to think Biblically.  Take a look at Colossians 3:12.  It says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts…”  Now, a literal translation of compassionate hearts will read a bit differently.  It will actually translate oiktirmou splanchna as “bowels of compassion.”  And that’s not the only place we find this expression in Scripture. I’ll give one further example, but I could give ten more.  In I John 3:17 we read, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” Now, a literal translation would change heart to, you guessed it, bowels (splanchna)!

But someone may ask, “Why then do we continue to read ‘heart’ in these other translations?” The answer to that is not difficult.  In our modern world, compassion is associated with the heart. We talk of opening or closing our heart to someone, not our bowels! So, translators who render splanchna as heart are doing those who cannot read Greek and do not know the etymology of Greek words a wonderful service.  However, the fact remains that in the ancient world compassion was associated with the bowels. This is why splanchna can be translated bowels of compassion in the texts above and we can read of Judas in Acts 1:18, “[all] his bowels [splanchna] gushed out.”

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