13 August 2022 draft-bible
2. and there were. Hebrew wᵉhinneh.
2. And he saw, and ran to meet them. So, literally, reads the Hebrew.
3. My Lord. Hebrew ʾadonai, literally, ‘my lords’, pointed by the Masoretes like the common term for God (with a qamats as its final vowel). The consonantal text read alone, however, could just as easily be read as ʾadoni, the ordinary and simple ‘my lord’.
3. bypass. Or more literally pass over from.
5. to sustain you. Instead of ‘you’, the Hebrew literally has ‘your heart’, but it seemed best, given the wide gap between some of the Hebrew uses of the term ‘heart’ and the uses in English, not to try to translate the metaphor. The verb ‘I will get’ is a cohortative form, and ‘sustain’ is imperative, a construction which shows that ‘I will get’ is an intended action, with the sustaining of the listeners being its intended effect. The WEB translates this adequately with ‘so that you can refresh’, and I try to tighten up the wording further. However, the ASV attempts to translate the imperative literally as if it were equivalent to an English imperative, and thus ‘strengthen ye your heart’ is an imperative in the ASV.
6. Hurry up. Hebrew mhr, the same verb that describes Abraham’s hurrying to the tent.
6. seahs. A measure of volume. See the entry by Powell, “Weights and Measures”, in ABD, which suggests that in postexilic times a seah was about 12 liters, and perhaps 8 liters in a pre-exilic system.
7. See the entry LAD in the appendix “Recurring Words”.
8. prepare. Hebrew ʿasah. In today’s English, ‘dress’ sounds like an awfully specific equivalent for such a common and general Hebrew verb.
8. was standing. A participle in Hebrew.
9. And they said. Hebrew vayom__ᵉru.
9. to him. Hebrew ʾela(y)v, this is one of the fifteen places in the Hebrew Bible where the puncta extraordinaria, sometimes also referred to as ‘cancellation dots’, appear. In this case, they are over the word ‘to him’. According to Tov, these dots always indicate the opinion that what is under the dots is to be omitted (Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Second Revised Edition, pp. 55-57). On the other hand, Dillmann claimed that the correct reading is lo instead of ela(y)v, which would not affect the English reading at all (Dillmann’s commentary on Genesis, as translated by William Stevenson, printed 1897, Volume II, ad loc.).
10. about this time next year. So reads the WEB as it appears at ebible.org. However, the WEB as it appears at biblehub.com reads “when the season comes round”. The Hebrew expression in question is kaʿet ḥayya, or, as Young’s Literal Translation puts it, “about the time of life”. The NHEB reads “at the time of life”.
(WEB as it appears 5/24/22 at https://ebible.org/web/GEN18.htm, versus as it appears on the same date at https://biblehub.com/genesis/18-10.htm. YLT as it appears at the same biblehub.com address, so also the NHEB.)
11. well on in age. Literally, ‘entering into the days’.
11. the way of women. A reserved euphemism for menstruation. The downside of translating ‘manner of women’ is the possibly that a reader will not understand the allusion, while the downside of reading ‘had passed the age of childbearing’ is that instead of translating, this substitutes the implications of a fact for the fact itself.
12. pleasure. Hebrew ʿednah, which according to Nahum Sarna means “abundant wetness” (The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, ad loc.). The word is a hapax. Instead of “will I have pleasure?”, NRSVUE reads “shall I be fruitful?”. DCH defines the term as “(sexual) pleasure”, while HALOT reads “lust”.
14. about this time next year. This is the same phrase as in verse 10, and whether or not the ASV understands it correctly, at least it is consistent. The WEB, however, translates it “about this time next year” in verse 10, but then apparently forgets and sticks with the ASV rendering in verse 14.
16. to send them on. Hebrew lᵉšalḥam.
17. what I am about to do. Hebrew ašer ʾani ʿośeh.
18. will bless themselves by him. This reads the niphʿal verb nibrᵉku as reflexive in sense: that is, that Abraham will be such an exemplar of a blessed person that his name will be used in blessing formulae: i.e., that people will say things like, “May you be blessed like Abraham,” etc.
20. the outcry concerning Sodom. This seems to me a clearer rendering of zaʿaqat sᵉdom.
20. heavy. Hebrew kabdah.
21. whether they have done completely according to the outcry against it which has come to me. Following the literalistic ASV here; the WEB paraphrases. The word which WEB translates as ‘reports’ (a singular in Hebrew) in this verse is the same word it renders ‘cry’ in 20.
24. Perhaps. Hebrew ʾulai.
27. I who am dust. Literally, ‘and I am dust.’
28. Perhaps the fifty righteous will be missing five. … because of five? A more literal translation.
30, 32. Now. The Hebrew here has a particle naʾ, which appears commonly in commands and requests. This is perhaps a matter of taste, but it does not seem to me like “Oh” strikes the right tone here. Not wanting to leave even such an insignificant particle untranslated unless necessary, it seems to me that the English ‘now’ can occasionally serve such a function.
33. speaking. Hebrew lᵉdaber. To read this as ‘communing’ (WEB, ASV) is a bit much.
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