The weary passenger stared blankly at the agitated waves of the ocean. The storm was dying down now, and the wind had ceased to blow with such fury. But the waves still were tossed about by the abating storm. The cold, gray water surged heavenward, and frothy caps heaved upward as the sea waters churned.
But the man looking out upon the sea was not thinking of the turbulent waves. His mind was absorbed with a shocking loss. The man, William Tyndale, had just survived a shipwreck. The vessel on which he had been a passenger traveling from Antwerp to Hamburg was now wreckage. His bags, clothes, money—all that he possessed—were ruined by the stormy waves of the sea.
William Tyndale was an outcast, a fugitive and stranger from his native land; he was truly a man without a country. He could not return to England on pain of death. For many years now, he had wandered in foreign lands. Germany and the Low Countries (the Dutch Netherlands) had proved a haven for him, and he quickly had learned the foreign languages. In fact, Tyndale possessed a gift for learning languages. He could speak more than seven tongues fluently!
It was spring, 1529, when the weary Tyndale stared out at the sea and grieved his loss. He had faced death many times without a murmur or complaint. He could say with the Apostle Paul, “For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (II Timothy 1:12). Tyndale knew that death was but the passage into the existence of a blessed immortality.
The shock that the man was feeling was not related to family at all. Tyndale had never known the joys of a wife and family. Although he loved children and honored marriage, God had never given him that opportunity. His status as an outlaw forbade the normal existence that would enable him to build a permanent home. So he was not mourning the loss of a loved one.
Nor was he grieving the loss of worldly possessions. He owned but little in this world and had long ago learned to live on bare necessities. Bread and water were his normal course of fare, and he often wore clothes that had been given to him by benefactors.
The shocking loss that grieved the distraught man was that of a few priceless sheets of paper, a precious manuscript. Somewhere beneath the waves was a treasure to which he had devoted several long, tedious months. It was the first translation in history of the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses, from the Hebrew language into the English tongue.
Already, several years earlier, Tyndale had finished the translation of the New Testament from Greek into English. By God’s grace, these rare books were already quietly being smuggled into England in sacks of flour and barrels of merchandise. In addition to his own printed copies of the English New Testament, several pirated editions had also been printed and released from other printing houses in Europe, flooding England with over 13,000 copies of the English New Testament, right under the noses of the bishops!
In spite of his previous successes, Tyndale longed to give his people not only the New Testament, but the entire Book of God. He had finally finished the first five books of Moses, working painstakingly from the Hebrew language, which he had at last learned to read with competency. Indeed, he had coined some of the most beloved phrases and terms from the Old Testament, such as mercy seat and Passover.
Now, the precious manuscript lay at the bottom of the sea. On the short voyage from Antwerp to Hamburg, where Tyndale intended to print his translation, the storm had brought a devastating end to his cherished project.
William Tyndale could have despaired. The man could have rested upon his past successes. He could have gone back to a life of ease and rested from his years of working by candlelight, living as a fugitive, and taking little sleep. He had already given people the New Testament; let them be content with that!
But Tyndale would not think of such retirement from his duty. He trusted that God must have had a purpose in the loss of this manuscript. He knew the truth that, even as he had himself translated from the Greek New Testament into English, Jesus “hath done all things well” (Mark 7:37).
William Tyndale’s soul burned with the desire to give the Word of God to his people in their native tongue. For the translation to be as accurate as possible, he had to work from the Hebrew text itself. So, Tyndale determined that he would start the work all over again. And soon, God’s purpose became apparent!
After taking another ship to finish his short voyage along the coast to Hamburg, Tyndale found a friend of his from his youth, Miles Coverdale. Together, the two men started over, laboring upon the work. Soon, they had completed a better translation of the books of Moses in a shorter amount of time! They compared the original Hebrew text with the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and the German translation recently completed by Martin Luther. Their teamwork had produced a better final result than the previous manuscript that had been lost!
Truly, God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Miles Coverdale would eventually outlive Tyndale. Coverdale would live to see an English Bible authorized by the King of England and distributed freely throughout England.
As a young man tutoring children on a country estate called Little Sodbury Manor, Tyndale had once told a prelate with whom he debated, “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause that a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the scripture than thou dost.” Indeed, by the time Tyndale died, in fields and meadows all over England, boys went to the fields with the words of the English Bible in their hearts.
Willaim Tyndale’s faithful life finally came to an end; fittingly, it was by martyrdom. Several of his devoted friends had already preceded him to the stake. In May 1535, Tyndale was betrayed by a “friend” in the city of Antwerp and delivered to prison. After a long prison stay in Vilvorde Castle and the best efforts of his friends to try to secure his release, he was finally condemned to be burned to death at the stake in October 1536. His final words uttered from the stake were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!” In less than two years, the dying prayer of William Tyndale was answered.
All subsequent translations, including the Geneva Bible and the Authorized Version, leaned heavily upon the beautiful phrases and words used by William Tyndale to give God’s Word to the common people—and the aforementioned plow boys—of England. Today, fully 90% of the words of the King James Bible are the very words and phrases carefully chosen by William Tyndale five centuries ago.
Sources and Further Reference:
Foxe, John. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011.
Loane, Marcus. Masters of the English Reformation. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2005.