You mean their husbands truly must be dead? What else could that phrase mean? I guess no widow could be cared for by the church if her husband were just pretending to be dead.

One of the constant debates in translation is how explicit to be. If the Greek says "he began to say," and context clearly shows that they are in fact beginning to say, don't you just follow better English style and say "he said"?

When we go through difficult times, sometimes they are the consequence of our own actions, but not always. When the book of Hebrews talks about God “disciplining” us, it doesn’t always mean we have done something wrong.

People often lump functional equivalent translations like the NIV with natural language translations like the NLT, and then critique the former based on the latter. But these are two distinctly different approaches to translation and should be kept separate, although obviously they share much in common.

Sometimes the pain in our lives is so intense that we can barely breathe. It doesn't feel like we deserve the pain (and perhaps we don't), and it is unjust for God to allow us to walk through the darkness. One of the worst things that someone can say at that time is to quote Romans 8:28, so before those times come we need to decide whether or not God is all good all the time, and whether or not he works in all things for good.

When asked what Bible translation they want to use, most people say a "literal" one. By that they generally mean a word-for-word translation, and they mistakenly think this means "accurate." But even words don't have a "literal" meaning, no translation translates word-for-word, and word-for-words does not produce an accurate translation, regardless of the marketing hype you may have read.