Lectures on Bible Revision

by Samuel Newth

Ps. xvi. 2, 3. “Thou art my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee. But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” Every reader of this psalm must have felt how obscure, if not unintelligible, are these words. A more faithful rendering gives a clear and appropriate sense, “Thou art my Lord, I have no good above thee. As for the saints on the earth, and the excellent, in them is all my delight.”[71]

Ps. xlii. 4. “When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me, for I had gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God.” The words of the Psalmist are not, as this rendering makes them to be, a mere statement of what happens whenever he remembers the sorrows of the past, and the mockery of his adversaries. They are a declaration of his purpose to remember, with lively emotion and gratitude, the privileges and mercies with which he had been blessed. “I will remember these things [i.e. the things he is about to mention], and I will pour out my soul within me, how I passed along with the multitude, how I went with them [or how I led them] to the house of God.”

Ps. xlix. 5. “Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?” This, though seemingly an exact rendering of the Hebrew, wholly misleads the English reader. The phrase, “iniquity of my heels,” can only suggest to him the iniquity which the man himself has committed, a sense which is altogether unsuited to the passage. The Psalmist would never say that his own personal transgressions were not to him a ground of fear. The word, which in Hebrew means “heel,” is that also which, by a slight modification, forms the name of the patriarch Jacob, the “Heeler,” or supplanter of his brother. In the opinion of many scholars, the simple form here used admits of the same meaning, and they render, “when the iniquity of my supplanters [or the iniquity of those who plot against me] compasseth me about.” Whatever be the true explanation of the Hebrew phrase, it is quite certain that it is the iniquity of others, and not of the speaker, which is referred to. Some change, therefore, in the rendering is clearly called for.

Ps. xci. 9, 10. “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee,” &c. The earlier English translations, the Bishops’, the Genevan, the Great Bible, and Wycliffe’s, have all kept nearer to the original than this. The most ancient version of all, the Septuagint, renders it correctly. The psalm is one of those which are intended to be sung by two singers, or two companies of singers, responding one to the other, and hence arises the frequent change of person that occurs in it. In the first clause of this verse we have one of the singers chanting, “For thou, O Lord, art my refuge.” In the second clause we have the response of the other singer, “Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee,” &c., down to end of verse 13.

Eccl. iv. 14. “For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas, also, he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.” The meaning attached by the Revisers of 1611 to the second clause seems to be, that the old and foolish king referred to in the previous verse, who was “born in his kingdom,” that is, who succeeded to the kingly power by inheritance, becomes, through his obstinacy, a poor man. This sense can only be got from the words by much straining, and has led to the introduction of the word “becometh,” which represents nothing in the original.[72] The correct rendering gives a plain and suitable sense: “For from the house of prisoners he goeth forth to reign, although in his kingdom [namely, the kingdom over which he now rules] he was born poor.”

Isa. lxiii. 19. “We are thine: thou never barest rule over them; they were not called by thy name.” The sense of this passage is entirely changed by the introduction of the word “thine.” The verse is the penitential acknowledgment of the depressed condition into which the nation had fallen in consequence of its sins. They are no longer as the chosen inheritance (v. 17), they are as an alien people. The Genevan translators give the true sense of the passage, “We have been [better, We are become] as they over whom thou never barest rule, and upon whom thy name was not called.”

Jer. iv. 1, 2. “If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the Lord, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. And thou shalt swear, The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory.” This as it stands is hopelessly obscure. The passage is an emphatic announcement of the blessings that would come to the nations from the penitent return of Israel to its faithful allegiance. If Israel will return, will put away all its abominations, and no longer swearing by idols, as if they were the highest objects of reverence, should make in truth and uprightness their appeals to Jehovah, then the nations would share in the blessedness of the kingdom. “If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the Lord, wilt return unto me, and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, and wilt not go astray, and wilt swear, ‘The Lord liveth’ in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness, then the nations shall bless themselves in him,” &c.

Ezek. x. 14. “And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.” This conveys a wrong impression. The prophet is describing, not as he is here represented, the four faces of all the cherubim, but one face only of each. The Bishops’ Bible gives the true sense by rendering, “Every one of them had four faces, so that the face of the first was the face of a cherub, and the face of the second was the face of a man, and of the third the face of a lion, and of the fourth the face of an eagle.”

Ezek. xxii. 15, 16. “And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee. And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.” The dark phrase, “thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself,” is commonly explained to mean, that whereas aforetime they were God’s inheritance, they shall now be left to find their inheritance by themselves. A more lucid and more suitable meaning is given to the words by the rendering adopted by most modern commentators, “thou shalt be profaned through thyself in the sight of the nations.”

Dan. iii. 25. “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” It is clearly misleading to attribute to Nebuchadnezzar any such exalted conception as that which we attach to the phrase, “the Son of God,” and so to render the clause misrepresents the original. The correct translation is “one like to a son of the gods.” A similar error occurs in vii. 13, where “one like the Son of man,” should be “one like a son of man.”