Comparing Old Testament Translations

Isaiah 40 opens the second great movement of the book with comfort for a people in exile. The voices pile up: comfort My people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, prepare the way, cry out. And when the prophet asks what he should cry, the answer is that all flesh is grass. Empires wither, Israel withers, and the people themselves are grass. Then comes the one thing that does not: in the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), וּדְבַר אֱלֹהֵינוּ יָקוּם לְעוֹלָם (udevar eloheinu yaqum le'olam, but the word of our God will stand forever). The verb יָקוּם (yaqum) is a qal imperfect of קוּם (qum, to rise, to stand), the verb used of a promise that holds good and is carried out.

There is a pleasing irony in anchoring this lesson on this verse, because the verse itself has a textual story, which section 4 tells. The Apologetics lesson Has the Text Been Changed? has already said what Isaiah 40:8 promises and what it does not: it promises that God's word will not fail, not that no copyist will ever slip. Read that lesson beside this one. The Koine Greek lesson Comparing Translations sets out the spectrum from word-for-word to thought-for-thought translation and five reasons good translations differ, and the Hermeneutics lesson Which Bible Are You Reading, in the module The Toolbox, explains how manuscripts and variants arise. This lesson assumes those three and adds what is particular to the Old Testament.

The particular thing is this. When translations of the New Testament differ because of the text, they are usually choosing between Greek manuscripts. When translations of the Old Testament differ because of the text, they are often choosing between the Hebrew and an ancient translation of it, or between the medieval Hebrew and a much older Hebrew copy found in a cave. To follow that, you need to know who the witnesses are.

The Masoretic Text, abbreviated MT, is the Hebrew text preserved by the Jewish scribes called the Masoretes, with their vowel points, accents and notes. Its oldest complete copy is the Leningrad Codex, copied in about AD 1008, which is the basis of the WLC and of the printed Hebrew Bibles scholars use; the older Aleppo Codex, from the tenth century, was largely complete until parts of it were lost in the twentieth century. The consonants the Masoretes preserved were much older than their codices, and the text had been copied with extraordinary care for centuries. Nearly every modern translation, the BSB included, translates the MT and departs from it only where there is a reason.

The Septuagint, abbreviated LXX, is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, begun in Alexandria in the third century BC with the five books of Moses and completed over the following two centuries. Because it was translated from Hebrew copies far older than any surviving Masoretic manuscript, it is sometimes a witness to a different Hebrew wording. It was also the Bible of most of the early church, and the New Testament writers often quote it, as Peter does in 1 Peter 1:24-25. Module 8 of this track has a whole lesson on it. Blue Letter Bible lets you see it: the Hebrew interlinear has a Septuagint button, the Greek text of the verse appears beneath the Hebrew, and Brenton's English translation of the Septuagint, made in the nineteenth century, is free online.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, abbreviated DSS, were found from 1947 onward in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea and at a few other sites in the Judean desert. They include more than two hundred manuscripts of biblical books, most of them fragments, copied between about the third century BC and the first century AD, a thousand years before the Leningrad Codex. The most famous is the Great Isaiah Scroll, a complete copy of Isaiah dated to about the second century BC and kept in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which has put photographs of it online. The scrolls showed, above all, how carefully the Hebrew text had been handed down. They also showed that in some books and some verses more than one form of the text was being copied side by side.

Footnotes also name other witnesses: the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), the five books of Moses as preserved by the Samaritan community; the Syriac Peshitta, an early Christian translation; the Latin Vulgate, Jerome's translation made around AD 400; and the Targums, Aramaic paraphrases used in synagogues. You do not need to know these in detail. You need to know that each is an independent window onto the Hebrew text, and that when several of them agree against the MT, translators take notice.

The BSB's footnotes tell you when its main text follows a witness other than the MT. You will see them in printed editions and on sites that carry the BSB with notes. On STEP Bible, open the BSB and look for a small mark in the verse; tap it and the note appears. The notes are brief and use the abbreviations from section 2. Four examples show the range of what you will find, and in each case serious scholars defend both readings.

Genesis 4:8. The BSB reads, 'Then Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out to the field."' Its footnote says the words in quotation marks come from the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, the Syriac and the Vulgate, and that the Hebrew has only Cain speaking to his brother. The KJV, following the Hebrew, has 'And Cain talked with Abel his brother'. The case for the longer text: the Hebrew verb normally introduces words actually spoken, and here none follow, so something may have dropped out; a scribe's eye could easily have jumped from the field in Cain's words to the field in the next clause. The case for the shorter: four witnesses may simply have filled an obvious gap in the same natural way, and the harder, more abrupt Hebrew is less likely to have been invented. The meaning of the story is unaffected either way.

Deuteronomy 32:8. The BSB says God set the boundaries of the peoples 'according to the number of the sons of God', and its footnote names the Dead Sea Scrolls; most Septuagint manuscripts have the angels of God, and the MT 'the sons of Israel', which the KJV follows with 'the children of Israel'. The case for sons of God: it is attested in Hebrew in a copy of Deuteronomy found at Qumran and supported by the Greek; verse 9 contrasts the nations with the LORD's own portion, his people Jacob, which makes best sense if the nations were assigned elsewhere; and a later scribe could well have changed a phrase that seemed to speak of heavenly beings. The case for sons of Israel: it is the reading of the Masoretic tradition, and it has an ancient Jewish interpretation linking the seventy nations of Genesis 10 with the seventy members of Jacob's family who went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:27). Many modern scholars prefer sons of God; the MT has defenders. Module 8 returns to readings like this one.

Psalm 22:16. The BSB reads 'they have pierced my hands and feet', and its footnote names the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Syriac, adding that most manuscripts of the MT read 'like a lion at my hands and feet'. In the WLC, where the verse is numbered 17, the word is כָּאֲרִי (ka'ari, like a lion). The KJV also has 'they pierced'. The case for a verb: the Masoretic line has no verb and reads awkwardly; the Septuagint, translated by Jews before Christ, has a verb meaning they dug; and a few Hebrew manuscripts, including a fragment of the Psalms from the Judean desert, spell the word with a final letter that makes it a verb. The case for like a lion: it is the reading of most Hebrew manuscripts, lions appear in the same psalm in verse 13 and verse 21, and the verb that the variant spelling suggests normally means to dig, so even the verb reading does not simply mean pierce. This is a live debate, and Christian and Jewish scholars are found on more than one side of it. Module 8 returns to the evidence. In a sermon, say what the footnote says.

Psalm 145:13. Psalm 145 is an alphabet poem, but in most Hebrew manuscripts it has no line beginning with nun, the fourteenth letter. The BSB supplies one, 'The LORD is faithful in all His words and kind in all His actions', and its footnote says the lines come from one Masoretic manuscript, the Septuagint, the Syriac and the Dead Sea Scrolls, where a large Psalms scroll from Qumran has them. The KJV, following the MT, lacks them. The case for the line: an alphabet poem with a gap invites the explanation that a line was lost, and the witnesses are early and independent. The case against: other alphabet psalms are irregular too, Psalm 34 among them, and the supplied line closely echoes verse 17, 'The LORD is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds', which is what a scribe filling a gap might produce.

Now return to the anchor. The Septuagint of Isaiah 40:6-8 is shorter than the Hebrew. After saying that all flesh is grass, it says that all the glory of man is as the flower of grass, that the grass withered and the flower fell, and then that the word of our God abides forever. It has nothing of the breath of the LORD blowing on the grass, nothing of 'indeed, the people are grass', and no second 'the grass withers and the flowers fall'. Peter's quotation in 1 Peter 1:24-25 follows that shorter Greek form. Peter did not cut Isaiah down. He quoted the Bible his readers knew.

The Great Isaiah Scroll adds a remarkable detail. Its first scribe also wrote a shorter text here, close to the Greek, and a later hand inserted the missing words so that the scroll matches the longer Hebrew. So both forms of this passage were known in the last centuries before Christ. Scholars explain this in two ways, and each deserves its best statement. One view holds that the longer text is original and that the shorter form arose by accident: verses 7 and 8 begin with the same words, and a copyist's eye, moving from the first 'the flowers fall' to the second, would skip exactly the words that are missing. The other view holds that the shorter text is earlier and that the longer form grew by expansion: a reader explained the picture in the margin, 'indeed, the people are grass', and the explanation entered the text. Both are possible. The corrector of the Great Isaiah Scroll shows the longer form was circulating early, which supports the first view; the agreement of two independent witnesses on the shorter form supports the second.

The BSB translates the longer MT and gives no textual footnote here. Its only note on verse 8 says that the passage is cited in 1 Peter 1:24-25. That tells you something important about footnotes. They are a selection, not a complete record. Translators note the differences they judge most significant for readers, and a passage without a footnote may still have a textual story. When you meet a New Testament quotation of the Old Testament that does not match your Old Testament, look first at the Septuagint, which Blue Letter Bible will show you beneath the Hebrew.

One word in verse 6 deserves a note. The BSB's 'all its glory' translates חַסְדּוֹ (hasdo, its hesed), the word usually rendered loving devotion or steadfast love when it is used of God. Here it is used of frail human beings, and translators differ: the KJV has 'goodliness', the BSB 'glory', which matches the Greek word in the Septuagint and in 1 Peter, and others choose faithfulness or loveliness. Whether the BSB's translators were following the Greek or rendering a difficult Hebrew use, the footnotes do not say. What the Hebrew sets up is a contrast you can preach without settling that question: human hesed fades like a flower, while Psalm 103:17 says that 'from everlasting to everlasting the loving devotion of the LORD extends to those who fear Him'.

First, keep the proportions true. The Dead Sea Scrolls showed how faithfully the Hebrew text was copied, and the places where a translation leaves the MT are a small fraction of the Old Testament. In most verses you study, every major translation is translating the same Hebrew, and the differences you see in English are differences of translation, not of text. Check that first. Only when a footnote names another witness, or a New Testament quotation does not match, are you looking at a difference in the text.

Second, never let a variant become the sermon unless the passage requires it. A congregation does not need a lecture on Qumran on the Sunday you preach Psalm 145. If your English Bible has a line the KJV lacks, a sentence is enough: the oldest copies we have include it, and most modern translations print it. If someone asks why their grandmother's Bible is different, that is a conversation to welcome, and this lesson has given you what you need to have it honestly.

Third, say what is settled and what is not. It is settled that the MT is a carefully preserved text and the right base for translation. It is settled that the Septuagint and the scrolls sometimes preserve older or better readings. It is not settled, in Deuteronomy 32:8 or Psalm 22:16, which reading is original, and you should not pretend that it is, in either direction. The word of our God stands. Our confidence in that does not depend on winning every textual argument, and it is not threatened by admitting that some are still open.

Open your passage in three translations: the BSB with its footnotes showing, the KJV, which follows the MT almost throughout, and one more modern translation available to you. On Blue Letter Bible you can open the same chapter in several versions from the list beneath the text; on STEP Bible you can add versions side by side.

Read the passage verse by verse and make a divergence log: a list of every place where the three translations differ in a way that changes the sense, not merely the style. For each divergence, write the verse, the three renderings, and your judgment of its cause: a different textual witness, a different meaning of a Hebrew word, a different reading of the grammar, or a different style. Use the footnotes to identify textual differences, and use your interlinear and word cards from lessons 1 and 2 for the others.

Finally, for any divergence caused by the text, look at the Septuagint of that verse on Blue Letter Bible and write one sentence on what it shows. For every divergence, write one sentence on whether it would change what you preach. Most will not. The ones that would are the ones to bring to a commentary, and to keep in mind when you reach Module 8.