Maggie's Farm

This is an awful translation.

"humankind?" "abomination"?
"company of the righteous"?

This self-important translation totally misses the almost conversational rhythm and direct tone of the Hebrew original. It turns a good man's angry rant - spoken at eye level - into a sour, condescending sermon.

Oh, and y'all can go on debating whether we Jews get pie in the sky when we die - while you wait another 2 millenia for "the king of the Jews" to "come back".

Meanwhile G-d kept his covenant with us, and brought us home.

King James is beautiful, and you can't blame it for not being colloquial by our modern standards.

Accuracy? Each translation gets some things better.

Hebrew is just much more compact than English - and this Psalm's angry, direct tone is a very good example of just how terse it can be.

For example: in verse 1 "they are corrupt" and "they have done abominable deeds" are each just one word in Hebrew: reflexive, intransitive forms of roots meaning "corrupt/destroy" and "repulsive/perverse". No mention of works or actions - they describe what the evil have done to themselves.

The closest I could get in English is "corrupted, defiled themselves." (note there's no "and"- it's like the speaker just bursts out with each word in anger.)

Similarly, "there is no one who does good" is an accurate translation, but in Hebrew it's just three short words - more like "none do good" in its effect, even though that's a less literal translation. Maybe "no one does good" is the closest in English.


Verse 1: both "hath said" and "says" are valid translations. In context, I'd go with "says".

Verse 2: King James is wrong, the Lord "looks" down. But "children of men" is better - the Hebrew for "human" is literally "child of Adam". Adam being a common synonym for "man" or "person". In this verse it's literally "sons of Adam".

I'd also combine elements of both versions to get: "to see if there is one who understands, and seeks G-d."

I understand why the translators went with the implied plural "any" - but the original is singular, and this reinforces the "no one" and "not even one" of other verses.

Again - this is much fewer words in Hebrew. "if there is" and "one who understands" are each one word.

Verse 3: King James' "gone aside" is closer. The telegraphic style of the original omits the subject "they" and literally means "All turn aside". And the whole verse is in the present tense - something that shifts in the translations.

I don't know where the 1st version got "perverse" - King James is closer with "filthy" - could also be rendered as lousy/miserable.

I'd render it as "they are altogether filthy/corrupt" which captures the sense of "alike" while being more literal, since the word in Hebrew is "together".

I don't know why the translators didn't close with the literal and effective "not even one".

Verse 4: "workers of iniquity" is just the sort of sermonizing that I meant. In Hebrew it comes out in choppy phrases, like someone ranting unprepared:

Don't they know, all evildoers, eating my people (like) eating bread, on G-d they call not.

The word "like" is not in the Hebrew - it's assumed from the doubled "eating". See? a terse rant.

Verse 5: Don't know where "generation OF the righteous" came from. I have:

There they feared greatly, for G-d is in the righteous generation.

"feared greatly" is literally "feared a fear". Maybe you'd say "feared up a terror" in English. Like "cook up a..." or "scrape up a... "

Verse 6: Both "but" and "because" are mistranslations that obscure the meaning. The Hebrew says:

They shame the counsel of the poor, that the Lord is his refuge.

In other words - the wicked undermine the poor one's conviction that G-d is his refuge.

"Because" renders the verse incomprehensible to me.

The modern translator's "confound" is a nice idea - the word literally means both "shame" and "spoil/rot".

Verse 7: Who can argue with the sweep of the King James version? "Oh that it were come" is a very nice rendering of an untranslatable Hebrew idiom that literally means "who would grant" (that this thing should happen= if only it would happen).

My wife points out that "the fool" could also be rendered as "the profligate" - it literally means "hollow". The same word is used for a wineskin or a wind instrument.

Hebrew is very easy to learn, much moreso than Arabic. Both the Hebrew alphabet and grammar have been simplified over time, while Arabic remains almost as complex as Russian.

Israel successfully teaches Hebrew to thousands of adult immigrants every year. It was required study for many of America's founding fathers, together with Latin and Greek.

For English speakers. it is blessedly phonetic and follows simple rules of pronunciation and grammar.

Does it leave room for interpretation? I would describe it as setting off ripples of secondary meaning - like tossing a pebble into water.

Everything is built on short roots of 2 or 3 consonants. Verb, noun, and adjective forms are all created by changing how the root is vowelized/voiced, or by tacking on prefixes and suffixes.

So the roots radiate meaning, and imply a range of related associations/meanings each time they are used.