Not long ago, Alex Suarez shared something he was looking at in Psalm 30, verse 8. The question presupposed the idea that the ALL CAPS or Small Caps of LORD / Lord in the Authorized Version of the Bible (King James) signifies the tetragrammaton (that is, is a translation of Jehovah).[i] In The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (p. 147), F. H. A. Scrivener writes: “Heb. Jehovah. The words ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ are always intended to be printed in small capitals in the Authorized Version, when they are employed to translate that Holy Name.”[For more detail, see also my post Lord, Lord, and lord.)
Alex noticed the ALL CAPS (or Small Caps) feature in Psalm 30:8 in the Authorized Version for Lord (i.e., the tetragrammaton / Jehovah / Yᵊhōvâ) seemed to be wrongly placed.
Psalm 30:8 I cried to thee, O LORD (יְהוָה / Yᵊhōvâ); and unto the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) I made supplication.
According to his source, it showed the second LORD in this verse to be a translation of Adonai rather than Jehovah. The text of the Authorized Version clearly has the same type-face for Lord both times.
This is a picture of the 1611 printing. It has Small Caps in both places.
Alex later reported that he ran across some other examples:
- 1 Kings 3:15 “And Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy), and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.
- Psalm 90:17 "And let the beauty of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it."
- Isaiah 38:14 “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy), I am oppressed; undertake for me."
- Ezekiel 21:9 “Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy); Say, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished:”
- Malachi 1:12 “But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.”
These findings raised two questions in my mind.
- Is this found using the same Hebrew text as used by the King James translators?
- Is the “Caps” rule re Jehovah universal and consistent?
On the first, I did a check of Psalm 30:8 in the King James Bible at Blue Letter Bible. This site gives the corresponding original text words beside the English words. Hebrew is not my forte, and I use this resource as a quick online check of original language words in the King James Bible. Having made the same finding as Alex, I moved on to think about the second.
On the second, particularly then, is there some rule or explanation somewhere that says LORD (ALL CAPS or Small Caps) always and only means Jehovah in the King James translation? It seems there is no statement by the translators themselves about this. It is an observation that has been made based on the text itself. I wondered if this might relate to translation rule # 1, which was about generally following the Bishops Bible. The 1602 Bishops had LORD in the same style both times in this verse. However, the answer was not to be found along these lines.
I found that I had too quickly accepted the reliability of my source at Blue Letter Bible, and did not follow up on the better explanation.[ii] However, David Stark, pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church of Redding, California, rescued us from our quagmire.
“Brethren, the Hebrew printed editions that the AV translators used had YHWH in all those places, and correctly translated it, according to the usage they chose, as LORD.
“The St. Petersburg Codex has ‘Adonai’ in those places. (Psalm 30:8; 90:17; 1Kings 3:15; Isaiah 38:14; Ezekiel 21:9 [21:14 in the Hebrew text]; and Malachi 1:12).
“It is always important to make sure you are looking at the actual text the AV translators used whenever you are checking their accuracy.
“From the Hebrew text they used, the AV is completely reliable in all those passages. (YHWH = LORD)”
David provided scans of a couple of examples from the Jacob Ben Chayim/ Daniel Bomberg edition of the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament. These have (יְהוָה), not (אֲדֹנָי).
There are different readings behind LORD in different Hebrew texts. Sources must be carefully checked and confirmed, lest we find the wrong answer. I had not previously checked the underlying Hebrew text used in the Blue Letter Bible tools. I had falsely assumed that since this was the King James Bible then the Hebrew text would be that which matched the King James Bible. Wrong. Lesson learned. The hard way.[iii]
This Hebrew text is a digital version of the Leningrad Codex developed by the Westminster Hebrew Institute and made available by The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research. This version is based on the January, 2016 WLC v4.20 release.
Wiping the egg from his face, he passes along a lesson learned (actually two, I suppose).
- Always check your sources.
- Don’t just take the quick and easy source.
2 comments:
good post brother
i think also, which you stated in your post, is not to take for granted the condition at face value - even though that ended up not being proven false - the example being:
is the rule a stated a hard rule or a partial observation by a witness years removed form the actual process that notices a pattern.
grace and peace.
Good point, Alex! I think we should be careful when saying the King James translators did something "consistently" or "as a rule" which they never claimed. That may or may not be a valid observation.
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