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Psalm 15 – Rough Translation

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

Here I provide a very rough translation of Psalm 15. I haven’t done any of the work on the passage yet, so this translation will likely change markedly by the time I’m done with the passage. Nevertheless, this should ensure that everyone is on the same page.

First the Hebrew, I’ve used the MT with no emendations. Not because I don’t think there are any that belong, but because I don’t have anything other the Rhalfs and the Targums available to me at present. I will likely make some text critical comments at some point, but because I don’t have the requisite materials I won’t be fully checking the text against the versions.

מזמור לדוד יהוה מי־יגור באהלך מי־ישכן בהר קדשך׃
הולך תמים ופעל צדק ודבר אמת בלבבו׃
לא־רגל על־לשנו לא־עשה לרעהו רעה וחרפה לא־נשא על־קרבו׃
נבזה בעיניו נמאס ואת־יראי יהוה יכבד נשבע להרע ולא ימר׃
כספו לא־נתן בנשך ושחד על־נקי לא לקח עשה־אלה לא ימוט לעולם׃

And now the English,

1. A David Psalm. O YHWH, who may sojourn in your tent? Who may dwell in your holy hill?
2. The one who walk blamelessly and who does righteousness and who speaks truth in his heart
3. He does not slander with his tongue, he does not do to his friend evil, and a reproach he does not life up against his companion
4. In his eyes the vile person is despised and the reverancers of YHWH he honors, he swears to harm and does not change
5. His money he does not give with interest and a bribe against the innocent he does not take. The one who does these things will never fail

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Job 5.2-7: A Rough English Translation

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

It has occurred to me that, for those not well versed in Hebrew, an English translation of Job 5.2-7 may be helpful in following the posts I have been making. To that end I provide a rough translation here. For the reconstructed Hebrew text from which this translation has been made, go here. The raised numbers refer to footnotes; they are not verse numbers. I apologize, in advance, for the rather lengthy explanatory notes. If nothing else the notes prove that all translation is interpretation. As always, comments are welcome.

Job 5.2-7
Surely1 anger slays the fool2
and envy kills the simple3

As for me,4 I have seen the fool taking root
but suddenly his abode was consumed!

His children5 are far from deliverance
6They are crushed in the gate
There is not a rescuer

What they harvested the hungry will eat
Their wealth the starving will take
The thirsty will pursue7 their possessions

For sorrow8 does not come from the dust
and trouble does not sprout from the ground

Rather,9 humanity10 gives birth to trouble
as the sons of Resheph11 fly high.

  1. An example of the asseverative כי. See GKC §159ee, GBHS §4.3.4i. ↩
  2. ל is used here to mark the direct object, a well attested phenomenon. ↩
  3. The word order of both lines of verse two has been rearranged in order to produce more natural English. ↩
  4. “As for me” translates the Hebrew אני. This translation was chosen primarily to ensure that the אני was represented in the translation. Secondarily, it serves to heighten the shift of focus which begins in verse three. Verse two is a proverbial saying, whereas verse three begins to relate Eliphaz’ personal experience confirming verse two. ↩
  5. Translating בניו as “his children.” This seems clearly to be the sense of the passage, as it is unlikely that Eliphaz has only the male heirs of the fool in mind. The entire thrust of the passage is that the fool gets his comeuppance, the fact that his children suffer is part of this. ↩
  6. The conjunction ו has been omitted. Likewise throughout. ↩
  7. In this case the parallel yiqtol forms in the first two stitches of verse five make clear that the final verbal form ought to be taken as a weqatal, regardless of the Masoretic accentuation. ↩
  8. און, in this passage, is in parallel to, and more or less synonymous with, עמל. ↩
  9. An example of the adversative use of כי. See GKC §163a-b, Williams §447 and JM §172c. ↩
  10. There are three possible translations for אדם which fit the context to varying degrees. The first is a basic rendering of the word as “a man.” This is certainly possible, and fits the context well. The second possibility is to translate אדם as “mankind” or “humanity.” This is quite similar to the first option, though perhaps somewhat more abstract. The final possibility is to take אדם as a proper name, and therefore to translate it as “Adam.” Of the three, this option fits the context the least, unless one were to take the verb as a preterite of some kind and translate “Rather, Adam gave birth to trouble.” Although this rendering may be possible grammatically, it does not appear to fit the context as well as the other options. Of those two options, the second has been chosen because it communicates best the crux of the proverb–human beings bring about their own trouble, it is not thrust upon them as if it were a plant growing from the ground. ↩
  11. The meaning of this phrase is difficult to ascertain with confidence. The LXX translator has chosen to translate the phrase as νεοσσοι γυπος (See Dhorme, Job, 61-62 for a discussion of the merits of taking בני רשף as a type of bird, probably an eagle). Modern translations normally see this phrase as some kind of metaphorical way of saying “sparks” (ie, “sons of flame”). However, there was a god named Resheph in the ancient near east, and it may well be that here there is a reference to him. David Clines has the right of it when he says, “since in Joban language the deity Death (Mot) has a ‘firstborn’ (18:13)…who are underworld demons, it is entirely likely that the ‘sons of Resheph’ had the same function,” (Clines, Job, 142). The sons of Resheph then are some kind of flying supernatural beings (demons? cf Targum Job). In order to remain as true to the original Hebrew as possible, while still making clear the reference to the ancient deity, the reading “sons of Resheph” has been preferred. ↩

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Translating 1 Samuel 6.19

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

I’ve been reading through 1 Samuel for a class I’m taking this Summer. I came across 1 Samuel 6.19, and to be honest I was somewhat amused by it. The phrase I’m interested in is reproduced below:


ויך בעם שבעים איש המשים אלף איש


Roughly translated the text says “and he struck among the people seventy men fifty thousand men.” The English translations deal with this in one of two ways, they either take it as fifty thousand seventy men (50,070) or they leave out the second number all together translating simply as “seventy men.” The textual evidence doesn’t really support removing the second number since the Hebrew text as well as any major versions contain the number.1 The few medieval manuscripts which lack it are probably best explained as a case of haplography. Of course, the first option doesn’t make sense either since if that were what the passage was attempting to say the thousands would come before the smaller units.2

I have no conclusions as to how best to translate this, though it seems that leaving out the higher number may well be the preferable method in this case. The other option is to translate the passage as-is, something akin to: “He [YHVH] struck among the people seventy men–fifty thousand men.” It hardly creates a smooth translation, but it does–more or less–represent the Hebrew. Mandy suggests that one might translate it “seventy men of fifty thousand men” (ie, 70 of the 50,000 living in Beth Shemesh). I suppose such a translation is possible, though I haven’t come across it.

As for why I found the whole thing amusing, after reading it I had the mental image of a scribe copying the text and deciding that seventy wasn’t nearly a large enough number for God to have slain, and so, in my mind’s eye, he increased it by a rather sizable amount.

  1. The best evidence for removing the number appears to be Josephus (Antiquities 6.1.4) who makes no mention of fifty thousand. ↩
  2. cf. GKC 134i ↩

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Jeremiah 3:9

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Thanks to everyone who posted a comment on my previous post regarding what Harvard class I should take. I appreciate the input! There’s still time, if anyone else wants to comment. :-)

I was translating Jeremiah today, and I ran across this problem in 3.9:

וַתֶּחֱנַף אֶת־הָאָרֶץ

Here’s the problem: how to translate? You see, the vowels clearly indicate that this is a Qal. (Alas, the vowels didn’t really copy and paste properly. Just take my word for it.) Unfortunately, the Qal definition of this verb is something like, “to be defiled.” This is a problem because there is a direct object marker after the verb indicating that the noun “the land” is the direct object of the verb. So, what it literally says is “she was defiled (DO) the land.” Obviously that makes no sense. The stative definition can’t take a direct object. At first I thought, okay, perhaps the DO is really the preposition “with,” as per the end of the verse, “and she committed adultery with the stone and with the tree.” Unfortunately, “she was defiled with the land” really doesn’t make sense in context. The land didn’t defile Israel, Israel defiled the land, which is clearly stated properly elsewhere. So, we either have two options: remove the DO marker and thus we are able to make “the land” the subject so that it reads, “the land was defiled,” or, change the vowels on the verb to make it a Hiphil, which would make it read, “and she defiled the land,” which obviously makes much more sense, and also fits the context better, since here we are primarily focused on Israel’s actions, not the land.

After consulting BDB I see that I am not (of course) the first to notice this problem, and BDB lists both options for resolving this. My question is, is there really a textual problem here? Did the Masoretes mess up the vowels on the verb, or include an extra DO marker? Or, is this some sort of poetic thing, where they just liked the way it sounded regardless of what we say the “definitions” should be?

Of further interest is that apparently this phrase is not in the LXX, though I’m not sure about the other versions. (BHS has a textual note but I’m not entirely sure what it means!)

This would be interesting to put some further study into, but, today I must forge on ahead in my translation.

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