The three columns in the following table represent three different stages in our access to Psalm 19. The first gives the familiar English wording of the King James Version (1611), one of the most influential English translations of the Bible. The second gives the Latin text of the Roman Psalter, which belongs to a much older translation tradition and is substantially dependent upon the Greek Septuagint. The third attempts to render as literally as possible the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic Text (MT), the form of the Hebrew Bible on which most modern translations are principally based.
Even this third column cannot simply be described as “the original Hebrew.” No original manuscript of any book of the Old Testament survives. The books were composed, edited and copied by hand over many centuries. Earlier manuscripts eventually disappeared through physical deterioration, destruction, political upheaval and, above all, replacement by later copies. The process of transmission is already visible within the biblical period itself. Nehemiah 8, for example, describes Ezra publicly reading from “the book of the law of Moses” after the return from the Babylonian exile. Whatever the precise historical circumstances behind this account, it depicts a world in which sacred writings were being preserved, copied, read and interpreted rather than one in which an author’s original manuscript remained available for consultation.
The evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls makes the problem clearer. Manuscripts from the last centuries BCE and the first century CE demonstrate that more than one form of some biblical texts circulated at the same time. Some are close to the consonantal text which eventually became the Masoretic Text; others resemble readings preserved in the Greek Septuagint or represent still other textual traditions. The Masoretic Text is therefore an exceptionally important witness to the Hebrew Bible, but it is not an original manuscript from which all other surviving versions were simply copied.
A further difficulty concerns vowels. Ancient Hebrew was written predominantly with consonants, although certain consonants increasingly came to indicate some vowel sounds. It did not possess the systematic written vowel signs familiar from a modern printed Hebrew Bible. Readers supplied much of the pronunciation from their knowledge of the language and from an inherited oral reading tradition. A sequence of consonants could therefore sometimes be vocalised in more than one way, producing different words or different meanings. Ambiguity could consequently arise before translation into another language had even begun.
The Masoretes, Jewish scholars working during the first millennium CE, attempted to preserve the traditional pronunciation and interpretation of the consonantal text by adding vowel points, accents and detailed scribal annotations. The system which eventually became standard was developed by the Masoretes of Tiberias and reached its mature form in the early Middle Ages. The Aleppo Codex dates from about 925 CE, while the Leningrad Codex, the oldest surviving complete manuscript of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, dates from 1008/1009 CE. The consonantal tradition represented by these manuscripts is demonstrably much older, since texts resembling it occur among the Dead Sea Scrolls many centuries earlier. Nevertheless, the Masoretic vowel signs themselves were added long after the biblical works had been composed.
The Masoretic vowels therefore preserve an invaluable tradition of how the consonantal text was understood and pronounced, but they cannot automatically be regarded as part of the original written text. Where the consonants permit more than one plausible vocalisation, the Masoretic reading represents an ancient and carefully preserved interpretation, but not necessarily the only possible one.
There is another complication. Biblical Hebrew is not Modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew was developed as a spoken language from the late nineteenth century onwards, drawing heavily upon the ancient language but adapting and extending it to meet the requirements of modern life. Much of the basic vocabulary and grammatical structure of Biblical Hebrew therefore remains recognisable to a fluent modern Hebrew speaker, but meanings have changed, words have disappeared or acquired new senses, grammatical constructions have altered, and ancient idioms are no longer necessarily transparent.
The difference is perhaps closer to that between Modern English and the English of Shakespeare than to that between Modern English and Old English. A modern English speaker can read Shakespeare and recognise most of the language, but individual words may have meanings which have since changed, unfamiliar constructions occur, and particular passages require explanation. Old English, by contrast, is effectively unintelligible to an untrained modern English reader. Biblical Hebrew is generally not as remote from Modern Hebrew as Old English is from Modern English. Nevertheless, some biblical poetry is considerably more difficult than this comparison might suggest. It can contain archaic vocabulary, compressed syntax, rare words and constructions whose meaning remains disputed even among specialists.
Fluency in Modern Hebrew therefore does not by itself guarantee a correct understanding of an ancient biblical passage. A modern speaker may understand much of it immediately while still misunderstanding precisely those unusual words, archaic meanings or grammatical constructions upon which the interpretation of a difficult passage depends. Specialists in Biblical Hebrew must consequently compare usage elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, related Semitic languages, ancient manuscripts and early translations when attempting to determine what a particular expression meant.
Translation introduces a further layer of uncertainty. There have been thousands of English translations, revisions, partial translations and paraphrases of the Bible, produced at different periods and according to different principles. Numerous discrepancies are therefore inevitable. Translators must choose between possible meanings, decide how literally an idiom should be reproduced, and sometimes make sense of Hebrew which is itself obscure or textually uncertain. Earlier translations may also preserve interpretations inherited from the Greek Septuagint or Latin tradition rather than what now appears to be the most straightforward reading of the Masoretic Hebrew.
It is therefore too simple to describe every difference as a translation “error.” An ancient Greek or Latin translator may have misunderstood the Hebrew, but he may also have interpreted an ambiguous consonantal text differently, followed a different reading tradition, or even possessed a Hebrew manuscript whose wording differed from the Masoretic Text which has come down to us. The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that such textual variation genuinely existed.
The purpose of the following comparison is therefore not merely to identify bad translations. It is to expose the underlying problem. Without knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, the reader is dependent upon decisions made by translators; yet even with such knowledge, neither the precise form of the original text nor its intended meaning can invariably be recovered with certainty. What we possess is not “the original Hebrew Bible” but a collection of ancient textual traditions and witnesses from which scholars attempt to reconstruct and interpret earlier forms of the text. Psalm 19 provides several particularly clear examples of the way in which textual uncertainty, linguistic change, inherited interpretation and translation can affect what a modern reader believes the ancient text to be saying.
| Accepted English | Latin | Original Hebrew — literally rendered |
|---|---|---|
| 1. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” | Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei, et opera manuum eius annuntiat firmamentum. | “The heavens recount the glory of God, and the expanse/vault declares the work of his hands.” |
| 3. “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” | Non sunt loquelae neque sermones, quorum non audiantur voces eorum. | “There is no speech, and there are no words; their voice is not heard.” |
| 7. “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul.” | Lex Domini immaculata, convertens animas. | “The instruction of YHWH is complete, restoring/reviving the life/self.” |
| 12. “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.” | Delicta quis intellegit? ab occultis meis munda me. | “Who can discern wanderings/errors? From hidden things cleanse me.” |
| 13. “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me.” | Et ab alienis parce servo tuo; si mei non fuerint dominati… | “Also from the arrogant/presumptuous ones restrain your servant; let them not rule over me.” |
| 14. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight.” | Et erunt ut complaceant eloquia oris mei, et meditatio cordis mei in conspectu tuo… | “May the words of my mouth and the murmuring/meditation of my heart be for favour before you.” |
There is one important exception that demonstrates what is happening:
| Accepted English | Latin | Original Hebrew — literally rendered |
|---|---|---|
| 4. “Their line is gone out through all the earth…” | In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum… — “Their sound has gone out…” | “Their line/cord has gone out through all the earth…” |
Here the English has corrected the Latin and gone back to the Hebrew. So the pattern is not simply “English copied Latin.” Rather, traditional English sometimes inherited interpretations already present in the Greek and Latin tradition, while at other points its translators returned directly to the Hebrew.
The most striking example remains verse 3. The Hebrew says “their voice is not heard”; the Latin introduces “whose voices are not heard”, and the traditional English consequently produces “where their voice is not heard.” That addition changes the meaning of the Hebrew sentence substantially.
| Verse | Hebrew sense | Traditional English | Latin | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | expanse / vault (rāqîaʿ) | “firmament” | firmamentum | Both are traditional rather than exact. Hebrew denotes the expanse/vault of the sky; the translations introduce the notion of firmness. |
| 3 | “There is no speech, and there are no words; their voice is not heard.” | “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” | Non sunt loquelae neque sermones, quorum non audiantur voces eorum. | Serious discrepancy. The Hebrew says there is no audible voice. The traditional English and Latin turn this into the almost opposite proposition: that their voice is heard everywhere. |
| 4 | “Their line / cord has gone out through all the earth.” | “Their line is gone out…” | In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum | Major discrepancy in the Latin. English follows Hebrew qavvam, “their line/cord.” Latin sonus means “sound” and does not translate the Hebrew word. |
| 7 | “The instruction of YHWH is complete, restoring / reviving the life/self.” | “converting the soul” | convertens animam | Moderate interpretive shift. Hebrew nephesh need not mean an immaterial “soul,” and the verb is more naturally restoring / reviving than religious “conversion.” |
| 8 | “The precepts of YHWH are straight / upright.” | “right” | rectae | Minor loss of imagery. “Right” conveys the meaning, but straight/upright is closer to the Hebrew metaphor. |
| 9 | “The fear of YHWH is pure, enduring / standing for ever.” | “enduring for ever” | permanens in saeculum saeculi | Essentially accurate. |
| 10 | “Sweeter than honey and the drippings of the comb.” | “the honeycomb” | Traditional rendering similarly simplifies the image. | Minor discrepancy. Hebrew specifically evokes honey dripping or flowing from the comb. |
| 11 | “Your servant is warned / instructed by them.” | “warned” | Comparable traditional sense | Essentially accurate. The Hebrew verb can mean warned, admonished or instructed. |
| 12 | “Who can discern errors / wanderings? Cleanse me from hidden things.” | “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” | Latin likewise interprets them morally. | Mild-to-moderate interpretive expansion. “Faults” makes explicit the idea of sins, whereas the Hebrew literally speaks of errors/wanderings and hidden things. |
| 13 | “Also from the arrogant / presumptuous ones keep your servant; let them not rule over me.” | “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins.” | Et ab alienis parce servo tuo | Substantial discrepancy. English inserts “sins,” which is not present, though it is a plausible interpretation. Latin alienis, “foreign/alien things” or “strangers,” is considerably further from Hebrew zedim, the arrogant/presumptuous. |
| 14 | “May the words of my mouth and the meditation / murmuring of my heart be for favour before you.” | “be acceptable in thy sight” | ut complaceant… | Very minor. “Acceptable” gives the sense, although Hebrew is more literally “for favour / acceptance before you.” |
The discrepancies found in Psalm 19 are unlikely to be exceptional. Given the linguistic, textual and interpretive difficulties involved in translating the Bible, comparable differences can be expected throughout the many English translations that have appeared over the centuries. Some arise because the Hebrew itself is uncertain; some because different ancient manuscripts preserve different readings; some because the original consonantal text can be interpreted in more than one way; and others because translators have chosen clarity, familiarity or a particular interpretation rather than strict literal correspondence.
This does not mean that English translations of the Bible are worthless or generally unreliable. It means that every translation is also an interpretation. The English reader is not reading the words of an ancient Hebrew author directly, but a translator’s judgement about what those words most probably meant. Even knowledge of Biblical Hebrew cannot remove every uncertainty, since the original manuscripts have disappeared and the surviving Hebrew textual tradition is itself the product of centuries of transmission.
Psalm 19 therefore illustrates a much wider problem. Familiarity can easily give a translation an authority which properly belongs to the underlying text. A phrase repeated for centuries may sound definitive while concealing ambiguity, interpretation or even a substantial departure from the surviving Hebrew. The wording familiar to us in English should therefore not automatically be assumed to reproduce exactly what the Hebrew text says.
