The Bible in Living English (1972)
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THE BIBLE THE BIBLE in Living English
THE BIBLE IN LIVING ENGLISH
Translated by Steven T. Byington
This Bible has been printed as its translator, Steven T. Byington, prepared it. The spelling of names, choice of words, sentence structure and punctuation are according to his typewritten manuscript.
Chapter and verse divisions are largely the same as in other translations. But it will be observed that, in some places, the verse numbers are not in numerical order, or a certain verse number may not appear at all. Frequently the reason is explained in the Marginal Notes.
COPYRIGHT, 1972 by WATCH TOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Total printing as of 1981: 225,000 Copies
PUBLISHERS WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC. International Bible Students Association Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
Made in the United States of America TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
When I began making this translation, the chief topic of a preface would have been the reasons why a new translation of the Bible should be made. At present its first duty is to tell how this one differs from other new translations now extant.
The central purpose of this translation, the reason for which it exists, is to put the Bible into living present-day English. Such was the motive of William Tyndale when he made the translation which, with some revisions, is now in general use; and the same reasons which made his work necessary make the like work necessary today. If the Bible is worth much for the man on the street, it must speak to him in his language. A man who was brought up on the Bible and Shakespeare should presume himself incompetent to perceive how far their language is a foreign language to most people today.
In general, the Bible is not an archaic book except so far as it is foreign. In general, the original Hebrew and Greek was living Hebrew and Greek when it was written down. No doubt there are cases where the original has a word which was archaic when it was written, and in such a case an archaic English expression will be appropriate; but such cases are exceptional.
But I say "put the Bible into" such language. I conceive that the Bible does not consist only of the gist of what the prophets and apostles said, but includes also their way of saying it. To say in my own words what I thought the prophet or apostle was driving at would not, to my mind, be real translation; nor yet to analyze into a string of separate words all the implications which the original may have carried in one word; the difference between conciseness and prolixity is one difference between the Bible and something else. So far as a translation does not keep to this standard, it is a commentary rather than a translation: a very legitimate and useful form of commentary, but it leaves the field of translation unfilled. I think some recent translations have not sufficiently resisted these temptations. Undoubtedly a translation cannot in these respects be perfect, and these are matters in which the work of limited human powers is sure to be even less perfect than it might and should be; but at least I have kept these aims before me. I have felt that the familiar old version set about the right standard for the degree of literalness.
The new official Revised Standard Version has taken the view that the New Testament was written at a time when the Greek language was no longer used with precision by ordinary people, so that an attempt at great precision in translation is superfluous, and a rather free translation may rightly be used for the sake of smooth English. My view, on the contrary, is that everything in this world has a cause; when anybody uses one word and not another, there is always a cause for its being this word and not that; and it is a translator's business to come as near as he can to the ideal of always recognizing the cause and reproducing the effect. The person, educated or uneducated, who uses one word without discrimination of its strict meaning will use another word with very strict discrimination, and the word that he does not discriminate is likely to be discriminated by his next-door neighbor.
And the effort to gain smoothness by abandoning precision is not favorable even to English literary style: it tends toward monotony; it tends to lose the sharp flavor that the original got by choosing an unobvious word; and of course, when the original expressed an epigrammatic significance in crabbed language because no other language would have expressed it without prolixity, the insistence on smoothness tends to lose this significance. Phrases in my translation which look like fanciful attempts to decorate my style are likely to be simply careful attempts to reproduce the original with unwonted precision. Even where a distinction between two forms of expression means no more than that different forms are habitual to different writers, or that a writer varied his form for the sake of avoiding monotony, the distinction should not be abandoned without considering what could have been done to keep it.
But this principle of keeping to the original writer's form of expression permits, and even demands, a departure from what is ordinarily understood by literalness when his form of expression was dictated by some constraint in his language, and English is exempt from that constraint. Thus, Hebrew and Greek, like most languages, are much less thorough than present-day English in distinguishing between such forms as "walks" and "is walking." It is the translator's business to make the distinction, even though the imperfection of the ancient languages requires him to make it more or less by guess; if he fails to make it he is not using twentieth-century English but sixteenth-century English, and is obscuring the sense as the original did not obscure it. If Hebrew has no way to say "never" except by just saying "not," then where I find "not" in Hebrew I am right in saying "never" if it seems preferable in English; for the Hebrew writer had used the only way he had to say "never." I might well have said "never" in my Old Testament oftener than I have. If in order to express the idea of "servant" and cover both sexes the Hebrew has to use a separate word for each sex, then my proper translation for the Hebrew combination of two nouns and an "and" is the one word "servant," not a lengthening of the English by prefixing to "servant" another word to indicate the sex (which the Hebrew does not do) and saying "manservant or maidservant." The test is generally whether the English, translated into Hebrew or Greek, would have had to give what the Hebrew or Greek writer wrote. This also is a principle hard to live up to, but I have aimed at remembering it.
Our knowledge of Hebrew is to a considerable extent dependent on traditions which are by no means free from error. So is our knowledge of New Testament Greek, slightly, and so are our habits of translating New Testament Greek, not so slightly. One of the commonest tendencies to error has been the tendency to forget the specific meaning of a word and to substitute, by guess, a broader meaning which is broad enough to cover whatever that word can probably have meant. Thus our Hebrew dictionary gets an oversupply of loose synonyms for broad meanings with a tendency toward the abstract, and an undersupply of distinctive terms for specific things. For instance, the Hebrews were troubled with lions, and had a good vocabulary for lions; they had a specific name for a young beast that was about as formidable as any in a fight, but yet was readily distinguishable from an adult. Considering the way in which lions grow, this can hardly be other than the male that has reached full size but has not yet got its mane; it is then two years old. If our forefathers had found these creatures in America, they would probably have said "two-year-old" unless they were able to borrow an Indian word.
Our traditional rendering is the loose "young lion," which often looks as if it meant a mere cub. "Two-year-old" gives the conception more accurately; and, as in the case of most words, the more accurate rendering is the more picturesque, though in part of the poetical passages "young lion" may stand. Generally the attempt to recover the specific meaning of a word by comparing the passages in which the word is used is more or less uncertain; but, considering the general course that tradition has followed, the cumulation of loose broad synonyms has seemed to me so very unlikely to be right that the chance of being right in recovering the specific sense has really been the more probable chance.
Where good American usage and good British usage are known to differ, as between "rareripe" and "rather ripe," I have been American. Apart from any reasons for thinking that America is now best entitled to set the standard of the English language, I have done this because American is the language I know. If I had tried to follow British usage, the result could only have been a patchwork product. In one respect, at least, it is historically impossible for British English to be as good a language for translating the Bible as American English. For the scene of a great part of the Bible lies in a semiarid cattle country such as never existed in the British Isles, so that the English language never had an opportunity to acquire words for the conditions of such a country till the English race spread to America, South Africa, and Australia. If my translation ever comes to be reprinted in South Africa (an event of which there is no immediate prospect), the editor of the South African edition is hereby authorized to say "veldt" where I have said "range," and sometimes where I have not, and similarly to make my "arroyo" into a "spruit."
Many critics will find it hard to bear that in addressing God I have said "thou" in the New Testament and "you" in the Old; they will say I ought at least to have been uniform. Perhaps I ought; but my feeling was that the New Testament men had nearly the same feelings as we have about addressing God, but the Old Testament men, those of them who had most to say to God, such as Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, had not such feelings as lead us to give God a special pronoun. Really, Exodus 33:11 is a formal notification that it would be mistranslation to make Moses use one pronoun in speaking to God and a different pronoun in speaking to Joshua. No doubt I could reasonably have handled some of the latest parts of the Old Testament as I handled the New, but it seemed less conveniently practicable to draw the line between parts of the Old than between Old and New.
As to the Old Testament name of God, certainly the spelling and pronunciation "Jehovah" were originally a blunder. But the spelling and the pronunciation are not highly important. What is highly important is to keep it clear that this is a personal name. There are several texts that cannot be properly understood if we translate this name by a common noun like "Lord," or, much worse, by a substantivized adjective.
It is customary for the preface of a new translation of the Bible to say that this translation is to be used only for certain limited purposes, and for most purposes the old version, or a conservative revision of it, should still be preferred. I say the contrary: I sincerely recommend that my translation be used in preference to the old for all purposes, under all circumstances where mine is available. I do not say, observe, that mine is better than any other that can or will be made; neither do I say that it is probable that mine will become everybody's Bible.
What I have more right to expect, and what I am bound to be content with, is that when a Bible is made which shall be everybody's Bible, my work will have contributed part of the material which will go into it; what I am here recommending is that when a choice is to be made between mine and the old version, and a version better than either is not available, mine be chosen rather than the old.
It is time we were done with taking the old version as our standard. It should be understood by everybody that where the present revised versions and new versions agree with each other, as they do in a good many points, these are presumably the genuine Bible and the old version is not. One school of thought among us makes much of the texts which forbid man to cut out any part of God's word. They do not seem to pay as much attention to the fact that the same texts, and more texts, forbid us to add to it. Yet it is with reason that the Bible has more to say against adding than against subtracting, for certainly it is a grosser blasphemy to put forward our own figments as God's word than to cut out parts of the word either by "higher criticism" or, what is commoner, by merely not reading those parts. The old version contains forged texts. The most glaring case is the words about the three witnesses in heaven in 1 John 5:7. The translators of the old version found these words in what they supposed was the original Greek. But those words never were in the Greek till after the invention of printing; we have a fair probability of being right in telling the name and post-office address of the Englishman who put that forgery into the Greek. There are other cases not quite so glaring, but not substantially less certain. A man who uses the old version as his standard Bible has no right to claim that he is treating the Bible respectfully as the word of God.
The literary merits of the Bible are the work of the prophets and apostles, and will remain in any reasonably faithful translation. The supposed extraordinary superiority of the old version to other versions is largely a matter of familiarity. Anybody who has for many years used the revised version as his only habitual Bible, and then has occasion to reread the old version, will see that when he thus comes to the old as an unfamiliar version it falls short of its reputation. A man has a right to like the language of the old version either just because of familiarity or because of a personal taste for archaism; but this does not justify him in inflicting the old version on those for whom archaic English slows up the understanding. In any case, a new translator may claim it as his right that if the old version is judged by its best passages, his own shall be judged by its best too; or that if Ms is to be judged by its worst, these shall be compared with such passages of the old as Genesis 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 16:14.
Like other translators, I have added some notes on places where the text might have been differently translated, or where the ancient copies differ from each other as to the original words. Among these notes, most readers will perhaps think that in the Old Testament there are too many which express doubt whether we have a correct copy of the original Hebrew, or say that the translator has depended on a guess as to what may have been the original Hebrew word, or that perhaps he ought to have depended on a guess. This calls for some explanation.
As soon as the New Testament books were written, the Christians at once began to make many copies of them, because many of the Christians could read and they all recognized the value of such fundamental books. Consequently we have many copies of those books, including a few copies that are very ancient and very reliable, so that we know the exact words of the New Testament with greater certainty than those of any of the other famous ancient Greek and Latin writers. But the Old Testament books were written when comparatively few people could read, and few copies of them were made at first. And at first less pains than you might expect were taken to make the copies accurate. Where one book of the Bible has copied something out of another, we can often see, for instance, that Chronicles has made a mistake in copying out of Samuel or Kings in one place, or that in another place Chronicles had the word right but our copies of Samuel or Kings have it wrong, a mistake having been made in copying them at some time after Chronicles was written. Sometimes even intentional changes were made. Jeremiah 8:8 says that in Jeremiah's time the commonly accepted copies of the law of Moses were so incorrect as to contain substantial falsehoods; Jeremiah's words seem to mean that the false matter had been willfully put in; and it would be hard to prove that our copies of the law are not made from the ones that were commonly accepted in Jeremiah's time. Professor Welch thinks Jeremiah meant that a certain paragraph had been added by somebody, which had the effect of changing the apparent meaning of several other paragraphs; and Professor Welch thinks he can tell what the change was. That is for him to prove; in my translation I have not attended to guesses of that sort.
But we know from the ancient translations of the Old Testament into other languages, especially into Greek, that in some places the men who made those translations had a Hebrew text different from the one we now have; and we can see that in some places they seem to have had the right text, though in more places our Hebrew text seems to be right. But this Hebrew text of ours has been through much trouble. The Jewish religion has been persecuted by enemies who tried to destroy all the copies of the Bible they could lay their hands on. King Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria undertook to do this. There was a persecution under the Roman emperor Hadrian; Professor de Lagarde guesses that Hadrian did a worse job than Antiochus. Even the persecutions of the Jews by the Christians in later times did some harm along this line. Meanwhile, the Jews reformed their habits of copying, and began taking extraordinary pains to make all their copies agree exactly with certain standard copies. Opinions differ as to just how good these standard copies were; but by the Jews' own account they were not absolutely faultless; and the rule of conforming all copies to this standard had the effect of destroying all different copies which might in some places have been right. The consequence is that in some places we do have to see how well we can do with guessing. Sometimes the Hebrew gives reason for suspecting a mistake in copying where no reason is apparent in the English.
I have found in a copy of the English Bible a text where the word "book" was misprinted "took." Suppose I were a missionary translating the Bible into the language of some island; suppose the only thing I had to translate from was this misprinted English Bible. Should I translate "took"? I should not. I should know by the sense, and by comparing other texts where the same phrase was found, that this was a printer's error; and I should translate "book."
This would be a guess of mine. There are in the Hebrew Bible some such slips which are preserved under the Jews' present rule of exact copying, but which it is understood to be the business of every user of the Bible to correct in his mind, or, if he reads aloud, in his voice. But some cases are not so simple. There will be a text that everybody agrees must be wrong; different students will make a dozen different guesses as to what might have been the way it was originally written. Somebody else will say that the chances may be five to one that the text that comes to us is wrong, but they are ten to one that the best guess that has been made is wrong, so that we have really more chance of being right by not trying to guess even though we are fairly sure that there has been some mistake in copying. Then they begin calling each other names: the man who has made no guess says that the man who has guessed is treating the Bible lazily, carelessly, disrespectfully, and the man who has guessed says that the man who did not is treating the Bible lazily, carelessly, disrespectfully. Generally the accusation is false on both sides. Bach man is conscientiously and carefully doing his best to have the genuine words of the Bible as they were originally written, and often there is much to be said on both sides. Of course there can be laziness either way: a man can be too lazy to make a difficult guess when he ought to see that it is his duty, or a man can lazily make a guess to get out of the trouble of understanding a hard text which he could have understood by putting a little more work on it; and laziness is never the right way to study the Bible. But most of them are working honestly and giving real help. At any rate there is one good thing in having a Bible that tells you where guessing is to be thought of: you may suppose that where it makes no note you are sure enough; and you will find that after all most of the text is straight and sure.
Sometimes a difference that seems very sweeping in English will be made by a very little difference in Hebrew. You know that "feather" does not look so much like either "leather" or "father" in French as it does in English; and that the only difference in English writing between "nowhere" and "now here" is the space between the words—and in ancient times the separation between words was generally left to the reader's judgment. You know that in some people's handwriting it is hard to tell "there" from "then" or "these" or "three." If a sentence begins with one of these words, the difference between these words may make a difference with the meaning of the other words; the trouble you often have in the first reading of a newspaper headline teaches you how much the meaning and connection of the words may depend on the way you start to read the line. And the Hebrew alphabet has at all times been much plagued with letters that look almost alike. In my Hebrew Bible, which is on the whole the best that I know of, the well-known words "blossom as the rose" are misprinted "blossom with roses"; the difference is so slight a difference in the shape of one letter that the proofreaders never noticed it. Luckily or unluckily, it makes good sense either way: luckily, because no great harm comes from reading it wrongly; unluckily, because the reader cannot see for himself that this must be a mistake. And you positively have to get used to the question whether to read "because" or "with me," they look so much alike. Nevertheless, take a warning against books that tell you that the guess they adopt is "a slight change" in the Hebrew: usually the man calls every change that he wants to make "slight."
But a prudent man will be shy of guessing unless the change from a recorded form is really a slight one.
Please believe that in my work of many years, with the help of the books of many good students, I have done my best to give you in English the genuine Bible as the prophets and apostles wrote it, and that you are not unsafe in taking what you find here.
S. T. B.
EXPLANATIONS OP ABBREVIATIONS USED IN MARGINAL NOTES
Codd. - Codices. The translation given represents what it is guessed may have been written originally; the ancient codices or copies of the text, or those of them that seem to be most reliable, read as follows, but in the original language it seems impossible that this can be right.
Conj. — Conjecture. The translation given is that of the text found in those ancient copies that seem likeliest to be right, but there is a guess that all these are miscopied and that the original writer wrote as follows. (The guess referred to by "Conj." and "Codd." is usually that of some famous commentator, recorded in critical commentaries on the books; often one that is adopted by many commentators. In a few cases it is a guess of my own.)
Lit. Literally. The form of expression in the original is more nearly as follows.
Susp. - Suspected. It is suspected that all copies of the text have some mistake made in copying, but we cannot guess what this mistake was.
Unc. - Uncertain. There is uncertainty here as to the meaning of the original.
Var. - Variant. The translation given is according to some of what seem to be the most reliable ancient copies of the text, but other copies read as follows. In some cases the translation preferred is from the Septuagint, and a rendering from the Masoretie text is shown in the Marginal Notes.
-Where one of the above abbreviations is followed by an asterisk, the difference of reading in question is not in the Hebrew letters but in the vowel points added to the letters by Jewish tradition. These "points" were first written down in the Middle Ages; in general they are the record of a tradition centuries older than their writing down, probably sometimes many centuries older, but in no case going back to a written record by the original writer.
Where the Marginal Note begins with "Or," it indicates that the original might also be reasonably translated as follows.
In connection with certain proper names in this translation there is a raised reverse comma. This is to represent the Hebrew letter 'ayin, for which there is no exact equivalent in the English language.
Adjustments made by the Publishers are indicated by the use of square brackets.
Alphabetical Listing of the Bible Books
Book Page
Acts 1401
'Amos 1201
Chronicles
Part First 535
Part Second 572
Colossians 1514
Corinthians
First Letter 1466
Second Letter 1484
Daniel 1164
Deuteronomy 239
Ecclesiastes 912
Ephesians 1503
Esther 658
Exodus 82
Ezekiel 1092
'Ezra 622
Galatians 1496
Genesis 13
Haggai 1231
Hambakuk 1223
Hebrews 1537
Hoshea' 1186
Isaiah 934
James 1551
Jeremiah 1006
Job 669
Joel 1197
John 1365
John
First Letter 1564
Second Letter 1569
Third Letter 1569
Jonah 1211
Joshua' 291
Jude 1570
Judges 325
Book Page
Kings
Book First 449
Book Second 489
Lamentations 1083
Leviticus 139
Luke 1320
Malaki 1246
Mark 1293
Matthew 1251
Micah 1214
Nahum 1220
Nehemiah 637
Numbers 181
'Obadiah 1209
Peter
First Letter 1555
Second Letter 1560
Philemon 1536
Philippians 1509
Proverbs 865
Psalms 725
Revelation 1572
Romans 1447
Ruth 361
Samuel
Book First 365
Book Second 408
Sephaniah 1228
Song of Songs, The 924
Thessalonians
First Letter 1518
Second Letter 1522
Timothy
First Letter 1524
Second Letter 1530
Titus 1533
Zecariah 1234 THE BOOK OF GENESIS
CHAPTER 1
1 At the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth2the earth was a blank chaos, and there was darkness over the surface of the deep; and God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.3 And God said "Let there be light," and there was light.4And God saw the light was good; and God parted the light from the darkness; 5 and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And evening came, and morning came: one day.
6 And God said "Let there be a firmament through the waters to part waters from waters"; 7 and God made the firmament and parted the waters below the firmament from the waters above the firmament, and it was so;8and God called the firmament Sky. And evening came, and morning came: a second day.
9 And God said "Let the waters below the firmament collect in one basin and let the dry ground appear," and it was so; 10 and God called the dry ground Earth, and the basin of waters he called Seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 And God said "Let the earth grow vegetation, herbage bearing seed, fruit-trees producing fruit which has their seed in it on the earth"; 12 and it was so, and the earth put out vegetation, the various kinds of herbage bearing seed and the various kinds of trees producing fruit which has their seed in it; and God saw that it was good. 13 And evening came, and morning came: a third day.
14 And God said "Let there be lights in the firmament of the sky to part the day from the night, and let them be for signs and dates and days and years, 15 and for lights in the firmament of the sky to give light on the earth"; and it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; 17 and God put them in the firmament of the sky to give light on the earth 18 and to rule over the day and the night and to part the light from the darkness; 19 and God saw that it was good. And evening came, and morning came: a fourth day.
20 And God said "Let the water swarm with animals and let birds fly over the earth across the face of the sky"; 21 and God created the great whales and all the various kinds of gliding animals that the water swarmed with, and all the various kinds of winged birds; and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying "Breed and multiply, and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth." 23 And evening came, and morning came: a fifth day.
24 And God said "Let the earth bring out the various kinds of animals, cattle and reptiles and wild beasts"; and it was so. 25 And God made the various kinds of wild beasts and of cattle, and all the various kinds of ground reptiles; and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, to bear empire over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the sky and the cattle and all the wild beasts of the earth and all the reptiles that creep on the earth."
27 And God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them; and God blessed them. 28 And God said to them "Breed and multiply, and fill the earth and subjugate it, and bear empire over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the sky and all the animals that move about on the earth"; 29 and God said "Here I have given you every seed-bearing herb on the surface of the earth, and every tree on which there is seed-bearing tree-fruit: they shall be yours for food; 30 and to all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky and all the creatures that creep on the earth, that have animal life in them, all green herbage for food"; and it was so. 31 And God saw all that he had made, and found it very good. And evening came, and morning came: a sixth day.
CHAPTER 2
1 And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their legions; 2 and God finished on the seventh day his work that he had done,and left off on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.3 And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he had left off from all his work that he had done in creating.4 This is the line of the heavens and the earth at their creation.
5 On the day that God Jehovah made earth and sky, when there was not yet in the earth any field bush, or any field herbage sprung up because God Jehovah had not made it rain on the earth and there were no men to work the soil,6and a mist used to come up out of the earth and water all the surface of the soil, 7 God Jehovah shaped man in clay from the soil, and blew into his nostrils breath of life: and the man became a living person.
8 And God Jehovah planted a garden in 'Eden on the east, and put there the man he had shaped. 9 And God Jehovah caused to spring from the soil every tree inviting in looks and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and bad.10 And a river came out of 'Eden to water the garden,
11 and from there it divided and made four heads: 11 the name of the first was Pishon, that is the one that goes all round the country of Havilah, 12 where the gold is (and the gold of that country is good);
13 that is where there is bdellium and beryl; 13 and the name of the second river was Gihon, that is the one that goes all round the Negroes'
14 country; 14 and the name of the third river was Tigris, that is the one that runs east of Asshur; and the fourth river was the Euphrates. 15 And God Jehovah took the man and put him down in the garden of
16 'Eden to work it and to watch it. 16 And God Jehovah gave the man
17 orders: "From all the trees of the garden you are to eat, 17 but from the tree of knowledge of good and bad you are not to eat, because on the day you eat from it you shall die."
18 18 And God Jehovah said "The man's being alone is not good; I will make him a helper to match him." 19 And God Jehovah shaped out of the soil all the wild beasts and all the birds of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called an animal was its name. 20 And the man named all the cattle, and the birds of the air, and all the wild beasts; and for man he did not find a helper to match him. 21 And God Jehovah threw the man into a trance so that he lay asleep, and took one of his ribs and closed up flesh in its place; 22 and God Jehovah built the rib he had taken out of the man into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 And the man said "This, now, is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out of man." 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and keeps with his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 25 And they were both naked,the man and his wife,and felt no shame.
CHAPTER 3
1 And the snake was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that God Jehovah had made; and it said to the woman "A pity God said you were not to eat off all the trees in the garden."2And the woman said to the snake "Fruit from the trees in the garden we are to eat,3but as to the fruit of this tree in the middle of the garden God said 'You are not to eat any of it, nor touch it, or you will die.'"4 And the snake said to the woman "Die you would not;5but God knows that on the day you eat any of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and bad."6And the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a fascination to the eyes, and the tree was an inviting thing to consider, and she took some of its fruit and ate it, and gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it. 7 And they both had their eyes opened and knew they were naked; and they pinned fig-leaves together and made themselves belts.
8 And they heard God Jehovah walking in the garden at the breezy part of the day; and the man and his wife hid themselves from God Jehovah among the trees of the garden. 9 And God Jehovah called out to the man "Where are you?" 10 and he said "I heard you in the garden, and was afraid because I was naked, and I hid." 11 And he said "Who told you you were naked? have you eaten anything from the tree I ordered you not to?" 12 And the man said "The woman you put with me, she gave me something from the tree and I ate it." 13 And God Jehovah said to the woman "What is this you have done?" and the woman said "The snake deluded me, and I ate."
14 And God Jehovah said to the snake "Because you did this, cursed are you beyond all cattle and all wild beasts; you shall go on your belly and eat dust all your life, 15 and I will set up enmity between you and the woman and between your issue and hers, it bursting your head and you bursting its heel."
16 To the woman he said "I will greatly increase your pains and pregnancies; in pain you shall bear children; and your impulse shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you."
17 And to the man he said "Because you listened to your wife's voice and ate from the tree that I ordered you not to, cursed is the soil on your account: by pains you shall feed on it all your life, 18 and it shall sprout thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat the herbage of the field.19By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you go back into the soil, because you were taken out of it. For you are clay, and into clay you shall go back."
20 And the man named his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all that live.
21 And God Jehovah made shirts of skin for the man and his wife, and clothed them.
22 22 And God Jehovah said "Here the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, and now he may put out his hand and take something from the tree of life too, and eat it and live forever";23 and God Jehovah turned him out of the garden of 'Eden to work the soil he had been taken from. 24 And he banished the man, and sent to perch on the east of the garden of 'Eden the Cherubs and the Blaze of the Whirling Sword, to guard the road to the tree of life.
CHAPTER 4
1 And the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and had a son Cain, and said "I have framed a man along with Jehovah." 2 And then she had another son, his brother Abel. And Abel became a herder of sheep and goats, and Cain a cultivator of the soil.
3 And after a while Cain brought an offering to Jehovah out of the fruits of the soil, 4 and Abel too brought some of the firstborn young of his flocks and the fat pieces. And Jehovah noticed Abel and his offering,5but he had not noticed Cain and his offering; and Cain was very angry, and his face grew glum.6And Jehovah said to Cain "What are you angry for, and why is your face glum? 7 If you do right does it not come up? and if not, sin lies outstretched at the door, and its impulse is toward you, but you are to rule over it."
8 And Cain said to his brother Abel "Let us go out on the range"; and when they were out on the range Cain stood up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 And Jehovah said to Cain "Where is your brother Abel?" and he said "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" 10 And he said "What have you done? I hear your brother's
11 blood crying out to me from the soil. 11 And now you are cursed off from the soil which has opened her mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hands: 12 when you cultivate the soil it shall no longer give
13 you its strength; you shall be a rover and roamer in the earth." 13 And
14 Cain said to Jehovah "My sentence is too great to bear. 14 Here you have banished me off the soil, and I shall be out of sight of your face 17 And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and had a son Enoc.
18 And he became a city-builder, and named the city for his son, Enoc. And to Enoc was born a son Trad; and 'Irad had a son Mehujael, and Mehujael a son Methushael, and Methushael a son Lemec.19 And Lemec took two wives, the first named 'Adah and the second named Sillah;20 and 'Adah had a son Jabal—he was father of those who live in tents and with stock;21 and his brother's name was Jubal—he was father of all who handle lyre and pipe.22 And Sillah too had a son, Tubal-Cain, pioneer of all who work in bronze and iron; and Tubal- Cain's sister was Na'amah.23 And Lemec said to his wives
and be a rover and roamer in the earth, and whenever anyone finds me he will kill me." 15 And Jehovah said to him "Then whenever any one kills Cain it shall be avenged seven times over"; and Jehovah marked a token on Cain that whenever anyone found him he might not kill him. 16 And Cain went out from Jehovah's presence and lived in the country of Nod, east of 'Eden.
" 'Adah and Sillah, listen to my voice;
23 Cain's sister was Na'amah. 23 And Lemec said to his wives
wives of Lemec, give ear to my say;
For I have killed a man for my scratch,
a child for my bruise,
24 24 Because Cain is avenged seven times over
and Lemec seventy-seven."
25 25 And the man knew his wife again, and she had a son and named him Sheth "because God has set me another issue in place of Abel because Cain killed him." 26 And Sheth too had a son born to him, and named him Enosh; it was he who began invoking the name of Jehovah.
CHAPTER 5
1 This is the record of the line of Man. On the day that God created man, in the likeness of God he made them,2male and female he created them, and blessed them and named them Man [in Hebrew, Adam] on the day they were created. 3 And Man lived a hundred and thirty years and begot one in his own likeness, after his own image,
4 and named him Sheth.4And Man's time after he begot Sheth was eight hundred years, and he begot sons and daughters; 5 and all the time that Man lived was nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
6 And Sheth lived a hundred and five years and begot Enosh.7 And after Sheth begot Enosh he lived eight hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters;8and all Sheth's life was nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.
9 And Enosh lived ninety years and begot Kenan. 10 And after Enosh begot Kenan he lived eight hundred and fifteen years, and begot sons and daughters; 11 and all Enosh's life was nine hundred and five years; and he died.
12 And Kenan lived seventy years and begot Mahalalel. 13 And after Kenan begot Mahalalel he lived eight hundred and forty years, and begot sons and daughters;14 and all Kenan's life was nine hundred and ten years; and he died.
15 And Mahalalel lived sixty-five years and begot Jered.16 And after Mahalalel begot Jered he lived eight hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters; 17 and all Mahalalel's life was eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died.
18 And Jered lived sixty-two years and begot Enoc.19 And after Jered begot Enoc he lived seven hundred and eighty-five years, and begot sons and daughters;20 and all Jered's life was eight hundred and forty-seven years; and he died.
21 And Enoc lived sixty-five years and begot Methushelah.22 And after Enoc begot Methushelah he walked in God's company three hundred years, and begot sons and daughters;23 and all Enoc's life was three hundred and sixty-five years;24 and Enoc went walking with God, and was missing, because God had taken him.
26 25 And Methushelah lived sixty-seven years and begot Lemec.26 And after Methushelah begot Lemec he lived six hundred and fifty-three years, and begot sons and daughters; 27 and all Methushelah's life was seven hundred and twenty years; and he died.
29 28 And Lemec lived fifty-three years and begot a son,29 and named him Noah, saying "This one will give us solace for our work and the pains of our arms out of the soil that Jehovah cursed." 30 And after Lemec begot Noah he lived six hundred years, and begot sons and daughters; 31 and all Lemec's life was six hundred and fifty-three years; and he died.
32 32 And Noah came to the age of five hundred years and begot Shem, Ham, and Jepheth.
CHAPTER 6
1 And when men began to multiply over the soil, and daughters were born to them,2 the sons of God saw the daughters of men were fine, and they took wives from any that they chose.3And Jehovah said "My spirit shall not be implanted in man forever by their misstep; he is flesh, and his time shall be a hundred and twenty years."4The Nephilim were on earth in those days, and afterward too, when the sons of God went in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them: those were the ancient heroes, the men of fame.
5 And Jehovah saw that men's wickedness was great on earth, and the whole drift of the thoughts of their minds was purely bad all day long. 6 And Jehovah repented of having made men on earth, and was pained at heart. 7 And Jehovah said "I will obliterate off the soil the men that I created,men, cattle, reptiles, and birds of the air,for I am sorry I made them." 8 But Jehovah liked Noah.
9 This is Noah's line. Noah was an upright man, living a conscientious life among his contemporaries; 10 Noah used to walk with God; and Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Jepheth.11 And the earth grew 12 vicious before God, and the earth grew full of outrage; 12 and God saw the earth and found it vicious, because every kind of flesh had taken to vicious courses on the earth.
13 And God said to Noah "Every kind of flesh has come to its end before me; for the earth is full of outrage because of them, and here I am going to make away with them, earth and all. 14 Make yourself a gopher-wood box; make the box full of compartments, and coat it with bitumen inside and out. 15 And this is the size you are to make it: four hundred and fifty feet the length of the box, fifty its width, and thirty its height. 16 You shall make a gabled roof to the box, and finish it at the top up to eighteen inches; and the door of the box you shall put in its side. You shall make it with first, second, and third stories. 17 As for me, I am bringing the deluge (water) upon the earth to make away with every kind of flesh under the sky that has the breath of life in it: everything on earth shall perish. 18 But I will make good my covenant with you, and you shall go into the box, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you; 19 and of everything living, of every kind of flesh, you shall bring two of each into the box to be kept alive with you; a male and a female they shall be. 20 Of the various kinds of birds and of the various kinds of beasts, and of all the various kinds of ground reptiles, two of each shall come in to you to be kept alive. 21 And on your part get yourself some of every kind of food that is eaten, and stow it with you, so as to have it for your eating and for theirs."
CHAPTER 7
1 And Jehovah said to Noah "Go into the box, you and all your family; for you I see to be an upright man before me in this generation. 2 Of every clean beast you shall take seven mated pairs, and of every beast that is not clean two, a mated pair; 3 also of the birds of the air seven each, male and female,—to keep alive the breed all over the earth.4For in seven days more I am going to have it rain on the earth forty days and nights, and I will obliterate off the soil all the beings I have made."5And Noah did just as God had ordered him.
6 And when Noah was six hundred years old, came the deluge (water) over the earth; 7 and Noah, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him, went into the box for fear of the water of the deluge. 8 Of clean beasts and of beasts not clean, and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground,9two of each came into the box to Noah, a male and a female, as Jehovah had ordered Noah. 10 And with the seven days came the water of the deluge over the earth. 11 In the year six hundred of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the water-holes leading from the great deep split wide,12and the hatches of the sky were opened, and there was a rain on the earth for forty days and nights.
13 On this very day Noah went in, and Noah's sons Shem, Ham, and Jepheth, and Noah's wife and his sons' three wives with them, into the box, 14 they and all the various kinds of beasts and of cattle, and all the various kinds of reptiles that creep on the earth, and all the various kinds of flying creatures, every bird, everything with wings: 15 they went into the box to Noah, two each of every kind of flesh that had the breath of life in it, 16 and those that went in went in a male and a female of every kind of flesh, as God had ordered him; and God shut the door on him.
17 17 And the deluge was over the earth forty days; and the water increased and lifted up the box, and it rose off the earth; 18 and the water swelled and increased greatly over the earth, and the box went on the surface of the water. 19 And the water swelled very high over the earth, and all the high mountains under the sky were covered; 20 20 four fathoms above them the water swelled, and the mountains were covered. 21 And every kind of flesh that crept on the earth perished, bird and cattle and wild beast and all creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind; of all things on the solid ground, 22 everything that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils died. 23 And all beings all over the soil were obliterated, from men to cattle, reptiles, and birds of the air; they were obliterated from the earth, and only Noah and those who were in the box with him remained. 24 And the water swelled over the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
CHAPTER 8
1 And God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were in the box with him; and God sent a wind across the earth, and the water was checked;2 and the water-holes leading from the deep and the hatches of the sky were blocked, and the rain was shut off from the sky. 3 And the water gradually drew back off the earth; and at the end of a hundred and fifty days the water grew shallow, 4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the box rested on the mountains of Armenia. 5 And the water grew shallower and shallower till the tenth month; in the tenth, on the first of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.
6 And at the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the box he had made 7 and let out the raven, and it went out and back and forth till the water dried off from the earth. 8 And he let the pigeon loose to see if the water over the soil had lessened; 9 and the pigeon found no resting-place for its foot, and came back to the box to him, because there was water all over the earth; and he put out his hand and took it and drew it into the box to him. 10 And he waited again, a week, and let the pigeon out of the box once more; 11 and the pigeon came to him at evening, and had a fresh olive-leaf in its bill; and Noah knew the water over the ground had lessened. 12 And he waited again, a week, and let the pigeon out, and the pigeon never came back to him again.
13 And in the year six hundred and one, in the first month, on the first of the month, the water had left the earth dry, and Noah took off the cover of the box and looked, and found the surface of the soil was dry; 14 and in the second month, on the twenty-seventh of the month, the earth had dried out, 15 and God told Noah 16 "Come out of the box, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 17 All the animals you have with you of every kind of flesh, bird and beast and every reptile that creeps on the earth, bring out with you, and they shall swarm about the earth and breed and multiply on the earth." 18 And Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him; 19 and all the wild beasts, and all the cattle, and all the birds, and all the reptiles that creep on the earth, went out of the box tribe by tribe.
20 20 And Noah built an altar to Jehovah, and took some of all clean cattle and of all clean birds and offered burnt-offerings to Jehovah.
21 21 And Jehovah smelled the genial odor; and Jehovah said to himself "I will never again curse the soil on man's account because the drift of man's mind is bad from his childhood up; and I will never again smile every living thing as I did. 22 As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day
CHAPTER 9
1 and night, shall never cease." 1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them "Breed and multiply,and fill the earth;2 and fear of you,and daunting before you,shall be on all the beasts of the earth and on all the birds of the air and on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fishes of the sea: into your hands I have given them.3 All the animals shall be yours for food like the
4 green herbage; I have given you everything;4only that you shall not eat flesh with its life, its blood,5and only that for your own lifeblood I will call all to account: I will call every beast to account, and men, as to each other, I will call to account for human life. 6 He who sheds man's blood shall have his blood shed for the man.
because in his image God made man. 7 And for your part breed and multiply, and swarm on earth and increase there."
8 And God said to Noah, and to his sons with him, 9 "And I for my part establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you,10 and with all animate life along with you,bird and cattle and every wild beast you have with you of all that have come out of the box,every beast of the earth:11 I establish my covenant with you,and all flesh shall not again be exterminated by the water of the deluge, nor shall there again be a deluge to make away with the earth."
12 And God said "This is the token I am giving of the covenant between me and you and all the animal life you have with you, to the remotest generation: 13 I have put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the token of a covenant between me and the earth; 14 and when I gather clouds over the earth, the bow will show in the clouds, 15 and I will remember my covenant between myself and you and all animal life in every kind of flesh, and the water shall not again become a deluge to make away with every kind offlesh.16 And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it to remember a perpetual covenant between God and all animal life in every kind of flesh on earth."
17 And God said to Noah "This is the token of the covenant I have established between myself and every kind of flesh on earth."
18 And Noah's sons who came out of the box were Shem and Ham and Jepheth, Ham being the father of Canaan. 19 These three were Noah's sons; and from these all the earth scattered out.
21 20 And Farmer Noah planted the first vineyard, 21 and drank some of the wine and got drunk, and exposed his person inside his tent. 22 And Ham, Canaan's father, saw his father's nakedness, and told his two brothers outside. 23 And Shem and Jepheth took the blanket on their shoulders and went backward and covered their father's nakedness, with their faces backward and not seeing their father's nakedness. 24 And Noah sobered up and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 and said "Cursed be Canaan: he shall be slave of slaves to his brothers." 26 And he said. "Blessed be Shem's God Jehovah, and be Canaan slave to him. 27 God widen Jepheth and take up his abode in Shem's tents, and be Canaan slave to him."
28 28 And after the deluge Noah lived three hundred and fifty years;
29 29 and all Noah's life was nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.
CHAPTER 10
1 1 And this is the line of Noah's sons Shem, Ham, and Jepheth: they had sons born to them after the deluge.
2 Jepheth's sons were Gomer and Magog and Media and Greece and Tubal and Moshe and Tyrrhenia; 3 and Gomer's were Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah; 4 and Greece's were Sicily and Spain, Cyprus and Rhodes; 5 from these the colonies on the foreign coasts branched off. These are the sons of Jepheth in their countries, by their several languages, by their clans, in their nationalities.
6 Ham's sons were Nubia and Egypt and Put and Canaan;7and Nubia's were Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Ragmah and Sabtekah; 8 and Ragmah's were Sheba and Dedan. And Nubia had a son Nimrod: he was the first to become a potentate on earth.9 He became a champion hunter before Jehovah; hence they say "Like Nimrod, a champion hunter before Jehovah."10 And the nucleus of his empire was Babylon and Erec and Accad and Calneh, in the country of Shinear.11Fromthat country he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh
12 12 and Rehoboth-'Ir and Calah and Resen between Nineveh and Calah;
13 that is the Great City. 13 And Egypt had sons, the Ludites and the
14 'Anamites and the Lehabites and the Naphtuhites 14 and the Pathrusites and the Casluhites and the Caphtorites (where the Philistines came from).15 And Canaan had sons, Sidon his eldest and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites and the Amorites and the Girgashites 17 and the Hiwites and the 'Arkites and the Sinites 18 and the Arvadites and the Semarites and the Hamathites; and afterward the Canaanite clans spread out, 19 and the Canaanite territory came to be from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Ghaza, toward Sodom and Ghomorrah and Admah and Sebojim as far as Lasha'.20 These are the sons of Ham by their clans, by their languages, in their countries, in their nationalities.
21 21 And Shem too had children born to him, Jepheth's elder brother, the father of all the sons of'Eber. 22 Shem's sons were 'Elam and Assyria and Arpacshad and Lud and Syria; 23 and Syria's were 'Us and Hul and Gether and Mash. 24 And Arpacshad had a son Shelah; and Shelah had a son'Eber. 25 And'Eber had two sons born to him; the one's name was Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. 26 And Joktan had sons, Almodad and Sheleph and Hadramaut and Jerah 27 and Hadoram and Uzal and Diklah 28 and'Obal and Abimael and Sheba 29 and Ophir and Havilah and Jobab: all these were Joktan's sons, 30 and their settlement was from Mesha till you come to Sephar, the mountain on the east. 31 These are the sons of Shem by their clans, by their languages, in their countries, by their nationalities.
32 32 These are the clans of the sons of Noah by their lines, in their nations; and from these the nations branched off after the deluge.
CHAPTER 11
1 And all the earth had the same speech and the same words.2 And as they moved along in the East they found a river-bottom in the country of Shinear and lived there.3And they said to each other "Come on, let us make bricks and burn them hard," and had bricks for stone and asphalt for mortar,4and said "Come on, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in the sky and make a name for ourselves, for fear we should scatter all over the earth." 5 And Jehovah came down to see the city and tower that the sons of men had been building;6 and Jehovah said "Here they are one people and all have the same speech, and this is what they do to begin with; now nothing that they design to do will be impossible to them.7 Come on, let us go down and mix up their speech there, so that they shall not understand each other's speech";8and Jehovah scattered them from there all over the earth, and they left off building the city.9For this reason it is named Babylon, because there Jehovah mixed up the speech of all the earth, and from there Jehovah scattered them all over the earth.
10 10 This is Shem's line. Shem, a hundred years old, begot Arpacshad two years after the Deluge.11 And after Shem begot Arpacshad he lived five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.
12 And Arpacshad lived sixty-five years and begot Shelah; 13 and after Arpacshad begot Shelah he lived four hundred and three years, and begot sons and daughters.
14 And Shelah lived thirty years and begot'Eber;15 and after Shelah begot'Eber he lived four hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters.
16 And 'Eber lived thirty-four years and begot Peleg;17 and after 'Eber begot Peleg he lived four hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters.
18 And Peleg lived thirty years and begot Reghu;19 and after Peleg begot Reghu he lived two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters.
20 And Reghu lived thirty-two years and begot Serug;21 and after Reghu begot Serug he lived two hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters.
22 And Serug lived thirty years and begot Nahor;23 and after Serug begot Nahor he lived two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.
24 And Nahor lived twenty-nine years and begot Terah;25 and after Nahor begot Terah he lived a hundred and nineteen years, and begot sons and daughters.
26 And Terah lived seventy years and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 This is Terah's line. Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran begot Lot; 28 and Haran died in his native country, in Ur of the Chaldeans, while his father Terah was head of the family. 29 And Abram and Nahor married: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's was Milcah, daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and of Iscah; 30 but Sarai was barren, had no child.
31 31 And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot the son of Haran and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and went out from Ur of the Chaldeans with them to go to the country of Canaan; and he came to Harran and stayed there. 32 And Terah lived to the age of two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Harran.
CHAPTER 12
1 And Jehovah said, to Abram "Betake yourself from your country your home, and your family, to the country I will show you, 2 and I will make you a great nation and bless you and make your name famous, and it shall be a blessing; 3 and I will bless those who bless you, and whoever misspeaks you I will curse; and all the clans of the
4 world shall bless by you."4 And Abram went, as Jehovah had told him, and Lot went with him; and Abram was seventy-five years old when
he went out of Harran.5And Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot, and all their chattels that they had accumulated and the persons that they had acquired in Harran, and they went out to go to Canaan.
6 And they came to Canaan, and Abram passed along through the country to Shekem's place, to the Oak of Moreh; and the Canaanites were in the country then.7 And Jehovah appeared to Abram and said "To your descendants I will give this country"; and he built an altar there to Jehovah who had appeared to him.
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