Orthotomeō is a Greek compound verb. Orthos means "straight." Temnō means "to cut." The verb means "to cut straight," and Sha'ul uses it once in the New Testament, in 2 Timothy 2:15, in his charge to Timothy: "rightly handling the word of truth." The Septuagint uses the same verb in Proverbs 3:6 and 11:5, where it describes HaShem making a person's paths straight. The underlying image is consistent: cutting a true line, plowing a straight furrow, building a wall whose edges are square.

Sha'ul is using craftsman language. The word of truth is not a piece of poetry to admire from a distance. It is material that has to be handled, shaped, cut. The handler is responsible for the trueness of the cut. If the cut is crooked, the wall does not stand. If the furrow curves, the field does not yield. The metaphor lands harder when you remember Sha'ul was trained as a Pharisee under Gamaliel, drilled in the craft of textual handling for years before he ever wrote a letter. He is telling Timothy what he himself was trained to do: do not curve the text to fit the tradition you inherited. Cut it straight.

This is the antidote to every false teacher Sha'ul names elsewhere in the same letter. Curved tools produce curved cuts. The remedy is not a better teacher; the remedy is the diligence to handle the tool yourself, and the willingness to be wrong about what you thought the cut should look like. Orthotomeō is the verb of a person who has stopped trusting his own posture and started measuring against the line.