This piece is part of The Choc Board, a 30-day writing challenge from my friend Chocolate Knox. You can follow Chocolate Knox’s Diagnostic Doxology on Substack, as well as his profile on X.
Below you will find one of those pseudo-etymological wordfun posts you all know I enjoy. Before we get to that nutmeat, however, I want to tell you about the brothers who inspired it, and commend to you the worthiness of their cause.
Recently pastors Bogumil (Bubu) Jarmulak of Poland and San Sanych of Ukraine were here in Moscow, Idaho to talk about what the CREC churches in Ukraine are going through.
Here they are on CrossPolitic:
Click here to learn more about the Joint Eastern European Project (JEEP), which joins the CREC churches in Europe. These churches make up most of Jan Hus presbytery. At the JEEP website you can learn how to pray and give in support of these churches, all of which are affected by the war, and one of which has frequently been in the line of fire. The pastor of that church stayed in his city through the worst of the fighting in his region, and was wounded twice.
Today I wonder at the everyday expression safe and sound, because Bubu used the expression several times in expressing prayers and hopes for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. I say he used the expression, but he didn’t phrase it quite the same way. What he said, charmingly and movingly, was saved and sane.
The expression in Polish is cały i zdrów. I won’t pretend to know anything more about it other than that it exists. It seems to exist on its own, as an actual expression, as the words separately translate more generically into whole and healthy.
The expression is not native to English, either, depending on how you define native. The expression had entered English by the 1300s, from the “Old French” sauf et sain. That is, it must have been a Norman expression. You probably already knew that it had some sort of latinate origin, especially given the alternate meaning of sound, the one used here: whole, intact, healthy. In a word, the older meaning of sanity: wholeness.
It’s the other word I want to talk about: safe, or as Bubu put it, saved. Saved and sane.
Safe and sound exists across several romance European languages. In Luke 15:27, the word ὑγιαίνοντα (hygiainonta), meaning to be well, in good health; to be right, reasonable, sound, pure, uncorrupted is rendered in most English translations not just as healthy or whole, but safe and sound.
And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’
Even the 1599 Geneva Bible says “safe and sound”. Exceptions include Young’s literal translation and the Wycliffe Bible. The Wycliffe Bible, heavily based on the Latin Vulgate, says simply “he received him safe”. In the Vulgate, quia salvum illum recepit.
Every Portuguese version I saw has são e salvo.
Nearly every Spanish translation has sano y salvo, except for the Biblia del Oso and the subsequent Reina Valera revision, both Protestant translations from the time of the Reformation, which have simply salvo, while the 20th-century updates have bueno y salvo.
French translations have bonne santé, while the newer Bible du Semeur has sain et sauf.
Every Italian version I checked has sano e salvo, save one which rendered it sano salvo, sound-safe.
The Catalan translation I looked at had simply “in good health”, en bona salut.
Or is it, actually, simply “in good health”? What is health? soundness? what is it to be saved?
The expression “God save the King” lingers in our language. Is the idea behind this that we’re praying the King have a Damascus Road experience? That he be suddenly converted and therefore saved?
Some who wonder about the origins of this expression cite its antiquity by referring to 1 Kings 1:38-40:
And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.
We must ask ourselves, however, who translated the passage that way. The Hebrew is חָיָה, live, i.e. “long live the king!” Like modern Spanish speakers say ¡viva! Or like I like to say, with the Cristeros (here’s an X thread I wrote about the Cristeros and American immigration/involvement, including some juicy bits about the modern Bible translation movement), ¡Viva Cristo Rey! In fact, sidenote, you can buy the t-shirt from my Etsy shop.
We say God save the King for reasons related to why we say Hail to Caesar, and salud or sláinte to those we’re drinking with. We’re wishing health. When we “salute”, we are wishing health. Hail used to be an adjective, meaning healthy, whole, safe. The Germanic sane.
Returning to Luke, why do so many Bibles, particularly the newer ones (i.e. less than 500 years), want to use an expression that so clearly is that, an expression, an idiom, something that comes so pre-loaded? Why are health or wellness no longer considered enough to express what used to be for he received him safe?
Because safe no longer carries the weight it used to. It’s far more limited, only a lack of negatives, a lack of peril or harm. Safe no longer encompasses save.
At last we arrive at the etymology of salvation. To save is not just to rescue, not just to make safe. To save is to make healthy.
Salvation: From Middle English savacioun, from Old French savaciun, salvaciun, from Latin salvātiō. Displaced native Old English hǣlu.
A brief aside about how cool hǣlu is: in Old English, the hǣlubearn is the child of salvation (i.e. Jesus), and a hǣlutīd is a happy time. This is the health-child, the healing-child. A happy time is a healthy time. Health is not just the lack of disease, it is ease. It is not simply sufficiency, but prosperity.
Anyway, salvation and the Latin salvātiō: salvō is to save, to make healthy. Okay, so far, so good. As an adjective, salvus means safe, saved, preserved, unharmed. One listed synonym: sanus as in sane or sound.
Cicero says hanc rem publicam salvam esse volumus, we want this state to be safe.
Also according to Cicero, Gracchus ordered that qui rem publicam salvam esse vellent, se sequi iussit, who would save the Republic should follow him.
So what is salvation? Is it to save, or to make safe?
Well, yes. To both.
And this makes sense. Jesus saved you, and saves you. Jesus saves and is saving.
Jesus saves you from death and peril. Jesus saves you from ill health of body, and disease of spirit. Jesus even saves in that keeps you and guards you. Those lame jokes about Jesus “saving” money may even be true.
Jesus saves in every sense of the word.
Bubu had it right. Saved and sane.
If Ukrainian saints are kept safe from Russian artillery shells, they are saved from those artillery shells. It’s the same thing. Jesus saves us, safes us, hails us from the world, the flesh, and the devil. He doesn’t simply pluck us out, he keeps us, he maintains us. This is why we can run and not be weary, walk and not be faint, and even mount up on wings as eagles. We hope in the Lord and he delivers, by walking alongside us always. That is what it is to be saved, to be safe, to be healthy, come what may. He keeps us not only safe and sound, but saved, and yes, even sane.