THE REVISED OLD TESTAMENT.* [SECOND NOTICE.] THE Revisers have had
an easier task in dealing with the historical, than with the poetical and the prophetical, books of the Old Testament. Excepting the ancient songs and ballads which are introduced into the story, the earlier traditions including the laws, and the annals of the kingdoms, are told in very simple narrative ; and very simple English can adequately represent the primitive, and, in many respects, almost rudimentary, forms of the Hebrew language. But the development of this language did not keep pace, as the Indo-Germanic languages have done in like case, with the culture of the Hebrew nation ; and it was hardly an adequate instrument for expressing the thoughts of their greatest poets, orators, and preachers. The speaker or writer could do little more than place the words of his sentences side by side, and trust to the imagination and sympathy of his reader or hearer to supply all that could not be expressed by mere position and context. It is always needful, bait was still more needful then than now, that thought should "leap out to wed with thought, ere thought could wed itself with speech." We see this characteristic of the Hebrew witnessed to by the Massoretic schools, where they endeavoured, by their elaborate system of vowel and accent punctuation, to preserve and record in the dead language the feeling, the thought, and the internal life of that language when it was still living. And although, as we have already said, the Hebrew language has in many respects a special and peculiar fitness for translation into other languages—so that Ewald calls it "the eternal mothertongue of all true religion "—yet whatever the Jewish scholars were able to do for the readers of the Hebrew itself, they could do little more for the needs of the translator into other languages than arrange and connect the dry bones into a perfect skeleton. For such a skeleton it was to Luther, to Tyndale, and to the other English translators, till their inspired genius clothed it again, in so marvellous a manner, with flesh, so that it lived again in its new form, as really as it had once done in its own land. The thoughts and images are no doubt there, in the Hebrew words ; but when we compare those words in their almost Chinese bareness and simplicity, with the grand sentences into which our translators have turned them, we may say that they created a new language for the purpose. But though the greater part of their work has been done so well that it cannot be improved, and to touch it must be to injure it, still there are many important passages—in Job, in the Psalms, and in the Prophets—where emendation was absolutely required. And we proceed to examine how far these needful emendations have been effected by the present Revisers. The apparently small but really important changes of " people " to "peoples," and "heathen" or " Gentiles " to "nations," are improvements : for though goyim, perhaps, involves something more of the shade of contempt implied in the word " heathen " than is expressed by "nations," the former is as mach too strong; and we think that the still more marked " Gentiles " ought to have been changed, even where the Revisers have retained it, as in Isaiah xlii., 6. Their introduction of Hebrew words, such as Sheol and Abaddon, into the English text, on the other hand, we consider a serious mistake. How can they suppose that they avoid "inevitable misunderstanding" of the first word, and that they give "vividness and point" to the other, when they turn "Hell and destruction are never full" into "Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied"? Abaddon is made a proper name in the Book of Revelation, and in the Pilgrim's Progress, but we do not know of any Hebrew authority for so treating it. Nor can we agree with the Revisers as to the propriety of retaining the Hebrew Sheol in those passages where it cannot be well translated " pit " or "grave." We admit the difficulty. The popular use of "hell" for a place of torment distorts its meaning, and prevents its complete fitness for representing the Hebrew Sheol. But the difficulty is evaded, not met, by keeping the word untranslated. It is a difficulty which must be faced as long as we keep the Creeds ; and who would venture to put Sheol for " hell " in them ? It would be better to adopt the modern coinage of " Underworld " than not to translate at all. Every one who reads or speaks a foreign language knows the feeling that this or that word in it has a shade of meaning not represented by any word by which it can be translated, and is aware of the consequent inclination to use the word itself instead of its best English equivalent. Everyone who attempts a revision such as that before us, knows how great the temptation is to change word after word, from the like desire to preserve some shade of meaning which is perceived in the original, and does not seem to be exactly or completely reproduced in the translation. But the Revisers should have realised more fully than they have done that such feelings and temptations need stern control. And they might have taken warning by the example of the Douay translators, who, in their desire to avoid inaccuracy or misapprehensions, ended by coining such words as " pasche " and " azymes " for passover and feast of unleavened bread. We do not, indeed, accuse them of any such absurdities; but we must say that along with much apprecia:tion of the right method, and with much successful application of it, they have often fallen into injudicious as well as unnecessary changes of words in the Old Version which had been better let alone.
In the Book of Job, with some changes for the worse, and some which are at least unnecessary, there are many which, by the occasional alteration of a word, give a coherent sense to long and beautiful passages which have hitherto been broken up by the intervention of unintelligible or obscure words. Thus, in Job's denunciation of the day of his birth, the obscure " Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it: let a cloud dwell upon it: let the blackness of the day terrify it," becomes clear by the change to "Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own ; let a cloud dwell upon it ; let all that maketh black the day [storms and eclipses] terrify it." The eighth verse, indeed, still needs a commentator; but the conclusion, "I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came," becomes clear and coherent when we read, "I am. not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest ; but trouble cometh." In Job's comparison of his pitiless friends to brooks dried up, we have, " The caravans that travel by the way of them turn aside ; they go up into the waste, and perish," instead of "The paths of their way are turned aside ; they go up into the waste and perish "—which would be still better if for " waste " we read "desert." The comparison of the miners' work under the earth with the search for wisdom, in the twenty-eighth chapter, is brought out by some judicious verbal emendations. The exclamation, "Oh, that mine adversary had written a book,"—which has hitherto had no popular explanation except that of the humourist who puts it in the mouth of an angry reviewer—becomes obvious when we read, "And that I had the indictment which mine adversary hath written." The description of the horse, with his neck "clothed with thunder," which, like a burst of music drowning the words, has really no articulate meaning, though even so accurate a man as the poet Gray adopted it, becomes plain by the change to "the quivering mane ;" and in the next verse the Revised Version is in all respects better, when it gives, "Hart thou made him to leap as a locust? The glory of his snorting is terrible," instead of " Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper P The glory of his nostrils is terrible." In the grand descriptions of the hippopotamus and the crocodile we will only notice one of several improvements :—the unintelligible "Who can discover the face of his garment, or who can come to him with his double bridle," becomes plain when we read "Who can strip off his outer garment; who shall come within his double bridle?"
In the Psalms we may notice the change of the quite obsolete " leasing " into "falsehood" or " lies ;" "The Lord abhorreth " for "will abhor, the bloody and deceitful man "; "Thou art my Lord, I have no good beyond thee," for" my goodness extendeth not unto thee." "Who maketh his angels spirits," becomes "who maketh winds his messengers "; "The King's daughter is all glorious within," becomes "within the palace is all glorious." Against these, and many such-like emendations for the better, we might set such unmusical lines as "For by thee I run upon a troop," and" The little hills like young sheep," and other small changes for the worse, where there needed no change at all.
On turning to the Prophets, we first look to see how the Revisers have dealt with that special difficulty—not unknown in the other books, but greatest here—of how to represent the Hebrew tenses of the verb in English. The Semitic conception of an act—in modern Arabic as in ancient Hebrew—is not that it is present, past, or future, but that it is completed or incomplete; and the Hebrew prophet, whose eye " doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," O; Fan Tei 4p.m, rc TIG•001.4£104, IrpZ T'EGTCC, employs an idiom and form of language
so different from ours as to be very difficult for us to understand and still more to reproduce in English, though it was, no doubt easily apprehended by those of his contemporaries who heard him with responsive imagination and sympathy. The older version has, in the greater number of cases, met the difficulty, and effected the rendering, rightly. Where they have left the tenses in what to the English reader is confusion, the present Revisers have sometimes—we cannot say always—set them in clear light. Thus, in the old version of the book of Joel, the whole is run together as one discourse, in which exhortations, threatenings, promises, and narrative are confused together by the unskilful reading of the tenses of the verbs. But the Revisers have reduced the whole to order by a few changes of futures to presents, or to past tenses. The prophet first calls the people together for a fast and prayers on the occasion of a great calamity of drouth and locusts, which he describes as actually upon them ; then, by a change of tense which the old version does not make, though it is indicated by the Massoretic punctuation, he gives a narrative of what happened when the supplications of the people had been heard by the Lord ; and, lastly, utters promises of the immediate and the more distant blessings which shall succeed the deliverance. We have not space to quote, as we might else do, many passages in which the sense has, in other ways, been made clear without any loss of grandeur or of beauty; nor those in which the change has either been for the worse or less for the better than it might so easily have been. One only, in the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah, we will notice. The Revised, no less than the older Version, fails, we think, to convey any distinct meaning of this prophecy ; but if the word "saying," which is not in the Hebrew, had been left out instead of carried on from the old to the new version, by merely reading " Go " in the obvious sense of "Go back," the sense would be clear. The first sentence of the prophecy would then be seen to be the description of the Ethiopian messengers sent to Jerusalem to propose an alliance against Assyria; and the rest of the chapter, beginning with "Go !" or "Go back," is the answer of the prophet, which in Jehovah's name he bids them take back.
The printing the poetical books as verse, and the rest of the books in paragraphs, with the numbers of chapter and verse only indicated for reference, is a great gain. Only, where the chapters are real divisions,—as in the Prophets, of the separate• discourses,—these divisions should have been moreclearly marked. And, though it is no doubt better to print the Prophets as prose, yet as it is rhythmical prose, differing but little in structure from the Hebrew verse, we think it would have been better to have marked the Massoretic pauses in these, and also in the poetical books, by colons and full-stops, as is done in the Psalms and anthems of the Prayer-Book, and as Ewald has done by single and double bars,—though his marks are too obtrusive. The Revisers have omitted those quaint little doctrinal sermons, the headings of the chapters, which is no loss ; yet we often wish that it had been possible to fill their places by short historical or critical, instead of doctrinal, summaries. The system of marginal notes adopted in the Authorised Version has been retained, but not always as judiciously as it might have been. We see no use in telling the English reader what the Hebrew word means, literally translated, for we cannot exercise any intelligent judgment upon it without reference to the Hebrew text itself. Nor are the alternative readings in the margin always so clear and luminous as they ought to be ; though they sometimes are, and oftener might be, of the greatest value. The Revisers hardlyneeded to justify their retention of "the LORD," instead of " Jehovah," though the latter—for which some scholars would prefer a still . more accurate form—would be the right word in a critical commentary for students. For the God of Israel is the Lord of the New Testament, whom we still worship in our churches and our homes ; and as long as the Bible is the manual of Christian men, women, and children, this harmony and continuity of interest must be paramount to the literary and the historical. The general change of " his " to " its " seems unnecessary when " which " is retained—most properly—where modern usage would read "who." We regret, too, the change of "car "to "plough." But we applaud the resolution of the Revisers not to listen to the proposals of their American colleapes that modern substitutes should be given for a long list of slightly archaic, but quite intelligible, words, such as " are " for "be," " helped " for " holpen," as also for archaic spellings. We had thought that the Americans had at least as strongly conservative a feeling as Englishmen about the preservation of what is old-fashioned. Some of the American suggestions, however, might have been adopted with advantage. They are more sensitive than our Revisers as to the use of certain coarse words which are, we should say, as disagreeable to English as to American taste. There are large portions of the Old Testament which, though fall of religious as well as literary and historical interest, are from their subject unfit for reading either in churches or in the family. But there are others in which the difficulty is merely one of those conventional habits of plain-speaking, or of reticence in the use of particular words, which vary with times and places. And here the obvious rule is that in a version of the Bible for popular use, no such words should be translated so literally as to be unfit for reading aloud. The English Revisers have made several improvements of this kind, though they might with advantage have added some suggested from America ; but both alike have strangely left, with far too small a change, a passage in Kings and Isaiah which few persons would like to read out, and for which even the old Hebrew writer of the corresponding Chronicles has been fastidious enough to provide the required substitute.
Time and space have permitted only a few and partial criticisms of this great work of years ; but we can hardly turn a page of this Parallel Bible without seeing many important as well as minor changes for the better, though also many which had been better let alone. But we trust that we have shown the respect which we feel for the Revisers, and their scholar-like labours, and our sense of the service they have with so much painstaking devotion done for the Church and nation. They themselves must recognise that the main object of their labours can only be completely effected by help of the fullest criticism of what they have done. We hope that the Universities may before long make this Revised Version as cheap, and, therefore, as accessible, as the Authorised Version ; and that the former, like the latter, may be permitted "to be read in churches," in order to lay it still more open to the fuller revision of the whole people. Only if it is so allowed to be read, it should be with a clear declaration that it is no authoritative and final revision, but may itself be hereafter revised again. It may be long before it is practicable to renew such a labour, but it would be a misfortune if the work were to be stereotyped for all generations.
Previous page
