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Friday, January 24, 2025

Keveh and Linen Yarn

Notes or comments in commentaries and study Bibles can be really bad. Readers think they are being given competent instruction, but you just never know! Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. At times commentators apparently just write whatever is on their minds without doing the necessary research. Here is an example from the Believer’s Bible Commentary by William MacDonald (Arthur L. Farstad, editor, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1995, p. 387), regarding the translation of 1 Kings 10:28.

8 (10:26-29) Keveh (also transliterated Kue) was translated ‘linen yarn’ in KJV because they did not know in the seventeenth century that is was a place name.”

The barest of research would have refuted this statement. The King James translators were well aware that this had been considered the name of a place. They just did not agree that it was. Notice, for example, how verse 28 had been translated in the 1537 Matthew Bible:

And Salomons horses came out of Egipte from Keva: The marchauntes fett them from Keva at a pryce.

The 14th rule given to the translators even said they should check these prior Bibles. “These translations to be used when they agree better with the Text than the Bishop’s Bible: Tindoll’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitchurch’s, Geneva.” Keva is found in the Coverdale, Matthew, and Taverner Bibles. The LXX gives it as a place name (Θεκουέ), as does the Vulgate (Coa). The translators were aware of these resources; the fact was not something “they did not know.”

No, the King James translators were not unaware of translating מִקְוֵה (miqvê) as a place. They did not agree that in this verse it was a place. They translated it accordingly. If you don’t agree with the King James translators in 1 Kings 10:28, just say so. Don’t act like they were ignorant.


Notes:

The translational issue is the same in 2 Chronicles 1:16.

I acknowledge that research in old Bible editions is easier in 2025 than it was in 1995. However, if we do not know what we are talking about, we should not talk; if we do not know what we are writing, we should not write.

“Fett” in the Matthew Bible appears to be or mean the same as “fetched,” which is what is in the Coverdale Bible before it. The word is a bit hard to make out in the copy I looked at.

1 Kings 10:28.
  • AKJV: And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king’s merchants received the linen yarn at a price.
  • NKJV: Also Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and Keveh; the king’s merchants bought them in Keveh at the current price.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. I don't recall that on my radar previously. Thank you for your research. I wish more were as thorough as you are. I wish I were always that thorough. Solid research is really hard work!
E. T. Chapman