Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Hebrew

  • Isaiah 49:2 – Mouths and Sharp Swords

    One basis I use for comparing Bible translations is the way in which idioms are handled. It’s difficult to measure this precisely, because you have to consider several things:

    • Is the idiom as used comprehensible to modern readers?
    • Does it mean the same thing to modern as to ancient readers?
    • Is there a reasonable English (or other target language) equivalent?
    • How good is the equivalent that was selected by the translation?

    Simply noting that an idiom in one language is translated by an idiom in another is not sufficient. Figures of speech work in essentially the same way and require that one ask the same questions.

    In Isaiah 49:2 we have a fairly simple figure of speech. In Hebrew, this very literally reads:

    He set my mouth like a sharp sword.

    Now I don’t know how natural that sounds in English to others, and I’m already running another poll, but to me “sharp” and “words” do go together in a figure of speech, and using mouth for the words spoken is also pretty standard. For example, I don’t think anyone has trouble understanding “potty mouth.” I have only rarely heard that combination with “sharp,” however. There I think we more commonly use “tongue” with “sharp” than “mouth.”

    So I classify the translations of the figure of speech in three categories. First would be those that translate the figure of speech or idiom completely literally. (I’d ignore the idiom if the figure of speech is common also in the target language.) The second group adjusts it somewhat to make it more comprehensible. The third translates the figure into natural, but not necessarily idiomatic language. The fourth group (of which I have no examples in this case) would provide an alternate idiom. The following list is not exhaustive:

    Translating the words and not the figure

    “He made my mouth like a sharpened blade;” (NJPS)

    “He made my mouth like a sharp sword,” (NRSV)

    Adjusted slightly

    In this case, the adjustment is generally “mouth” replaced with “tongue.”

    “He made my tongue a sharp sword” (REB)

    Translated into clear language (drop figure of speech)

    “He made my words as sharp as a sword.” (TEV) [Note here that one figure (mouth for words) is replaced, while the second (sharp) is retained.]

    “He made my words of judgment as sharp as a sword.” (NLT)

    “He made my words pierce like a sharp sword” (CEV) [In a sense another figure of speech is added, or perhaps “sharp” is merely enhanced, by the addition of the word “pierce.”]

    “He made my words like a sharp sword;” (HCSB) [The HCSB regularly surprises me, sometimes with incredibly obscure translations, and sometimes with exceptionally clear ones.]

    This comparison also raises a question with the NLT text. Should the words “of judgment” be added here? Is it perfectly clear that it is words of judgment alone that pierce like a sharp sword? On first reading, I am not happy with the NLT addition there. It makes plain something that is not plain in the text, and may even be incorrect. My mind could be changed, however.

  • Textual Emendation in Isaiah 49:7

    The JPS Tanakh of Isaiah 49:7 reads, in part:

    Thus said the LORD,
    The Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One,
    b-To the despised one,
    To the abhorred nations,-b . . .

    Note b reads: Meaning of Heb. uncertain. Emendation yields “Whose being is despised / Whose body is detested”; cf. 51.23.

    I noticed this first when I read this in Hebrew, and found that I was not able to produce a translation that I found satisfactory. I remained in doubt. So I looked it up in a few translations. Note also that the reading adopted in the JPS text is itself an emendation.

    (more…)

  • Tools: A Reader’s Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament

    I have blogged previously just a little bit about the A Reader’s Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament, and also made some negative comments about the use of interlinears, especially for Greek or Hebrew students.

    I recommend this lexicon for use in reading rapidly in order to encounter a large body of text in Biblical Hebrew. It does have a small portion of the problems of an interlinear. It presents you with a gloss that is likely appropriate, according to the authors, for the passage in question. It’s easy to bypass the context in that case, and just accept their gloss as it is. That is something you should avoid.

    I used this in doing some reading in Isaiah today myself. It has been a couple of years since I last used it. It is very convenient, because it does not include those words used 50 or more times in the Hebrew Bible, and then lists all other vocabulary items by verse. I found that the selected gloss was a good starting point. I’m not going to be making a habit of it, however, because generally if I find a word that I don’t know I want more information than that before I go on. But I can read text in this fashion if I want to.

    I’m spoiled a bit by Logos, because there I can have my keylink hooked up to HALOT, and thus get a much more substantial rundown on any particular word. In addition, I have the invaluable lemma report which allows me to see how that word is used throughout the Hebrew scriptures. But in the absence of such tools, fast reading could be facilitated by use of the Reader’s Lexicon.

    Some people question the value of such reading. Here’s why I recommend it as part, not all, of your reading in Biblical languages. There are at least two levels of “knowing” a vocabulary item from a language other than your native one. First, you may know a gloss, or a set of glosses that might be applied based on context. This is what is provided by normal vocabulary memorization, provided you memorize alternate options. You will build that type of vocabulary best by taking time to carefully study each word. The second is when you come to feel the range of a word’s meaning in it’s own language, because you have seen or heard it many times in many contexts, and you can select the range of meaning for the current context almost automatically.

    When you deal with translation and exegesis, both are useful. You will only develop the second by reading large quantities of text or hearing large amounts of the language spoken. With a dead language, hearing is difficult, and you must substitute reading. Then when you encounter a word, you will remember having seen it in many contexts. This is one of the major values of rapid reading.

    But there

  • Learning a Little Greek

    One of the major problems with seminary study of Biblical languages is that it is often short term and shallow. The seminarian, required to take a certain number of hours or just get by a particular test focuses all his efforts to getting past the hurdle. Precious few such students ever gain a real facility with the language. Some will have an exaggerated view of their own skills based on that study, but most will abandon what they have learned. Others will pop Greek and Hebrew words on their congregations, normally gleaned from commentaries and various articles of, often of questionable validity.

    In general, when you hear a pastor say “what the Greek really says,” prepare to be deceived. Not intentionally–the preacher really believes he knows, but actually he is probably missing the point. I have heard sermons in which the Greek word was completely wrong because the preacher simply provided the wrong Greek word. At other times, the error was one of context, when the preacher used a definition for a Greek word that was valid in some context, but not in the particular context in question. In one case, I heard a speaker recite the “real Greek” of a verse in four words. The only problem was that the verse was not, as he claimed, four words long in Greek, and not one of the four Greek words he used were actually in the verse he cited. I could just barely tell I was looking at the right verse based on the interpretation.

    I have a book in my library from the infamous Dr. Floyd Jones of KJV-Only fame. In the front of the book, on a page titled “TO THE READER – THE SOUNDING OF AN ALARM,” he cites a number of Hebrew words from Isaiah 14:12, in which he is giving the alarm regarding mistranslation. He should, however, be giving the alarm about his disastrous ignorance of Hebrew. I count no less than 8 errors in Hebrew in the course of a single paragraph. Now the KJV-Only position is so discredited that one might wonder why I bother to mention it. The reason is that most of the errors noted in that paragraph appear to result from the use of an interlinear in order to find the Hebrew form that is cited. Transliterations don’t match the Hebrew, though the translations match in the way an interlinear would.

    In both KJV-Only debates and discussion with lay “experts,” I have also encountered work done from Strong’s concordance. While it is more difficult to work with Strong’s than with an interlinear, it is even easier to be in error. Strong’s definitions are often out of date, and in fact they are generally not definitions at all but rather lists of glosses. I once was presented with a possible translation of a Hebrew text in which not a single word was translated correctly. On careful examination, however, every single word was translated by some word from Strong’s, and what was more, the resulting sentence was comprehensible in English though a bit stilted. It simply had no relationship to the meaning of the source text in Hebrew.

    We’ve probably heard that “to err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.” Well, enter Logos Bible software, now with reverse interlinears (HT: Metacatholic–I recommend you read his entire post). Now don’t get me wrong. I own Logos with all the Biblical languages extensions I can get my hands on. But many wonderful tools have potentially bad uses.

    When a student uses tools that allow him to look up words more quickly so as to cover more ground in reading that’s a good thing. One way to actually gain facility in a foreign language is to work with it. Many students plow through one or two verses at a time and never go beyond that. They become specialists in individual leaves on individual trees, but they have no sense of how Greek or Hebrew reads or feels. Tools such as reader’s lexicons–works that give glosses by verses–can be very useful for rapid reading. But they don’t teach you Greek. Neither do interlinears, and neither do reverse interlinears. (Everything I say here about Greek is equally applicable to Hebrew.

    I have to discipline myself to spend time reading without the tools to prevent dependence. Especially in reading the Septuagint, I like to go into Logos so that I can quickly look up some of the words that I don’t know from my New Testament reading. But to really dig in and learn the material, I need to read without those tools from time to time. Now I have taken an different approach from the normal seminarian (whoever that may be!). I started in Biblical languages as an undergraduate. I had several years of Greek before I got to Seminary. I had three years of Hebrew. I actually read the passages I use when I prepare sermons first from the original languages. I use all the Logos tools constantly–except for anything resembling an interlinear. That is something I won’t do to myself.

    The writer of the post on the Logos blog bemoans the passing of original languages requirements in seminaries. But I would suggest that it will not be an improvement if people who are not competent with Biblical languages start substituting their judgment for that of the trained translation committees and reviewers that produce our modern English versions.

    For more on this topic see my series Word Study Dangers and my post on my Threads blog What the Greek Really Says.