Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 8:1 | And Bildad the Shuhite will answer and say, |
| 8:2 | How long wilt thou speak these things? and the great spirit of the words of thy mouth? |
| 8:3 | Will God pervert judgment? and if the Almighty will pervert justice? |
| 8:4 | If thy sons sinned to him, and he will send them away by the hand of their transgression; |
| 8:5 | If thou shalt seek to God, if thou shalt make supplication to him; |
| 8:6 | If thou wert pure and upright, for now he will awake for thee and requite the habitation of thy justice. |
| 8:7 | And thy beginning was small, and thy latter state shall increase greatly. |
| 8:8 | For ask now to the first generation, and prepare to seek their fathers: |
| 8:9 | (For yesterday are we and we shall not know, for our days upon earth are a shadow:) |
| 8:10 | Shall they not teach thee, and say to thee, and bring forth words from their heart? |
| 8:11 | Shall the bulrush lift itself up without a marsh? shall the marsh grass grow without water? |
| 8:12 | While yet in its greenness it shall not break off, and it will dry up before grass. |
| 8:13 | So the paths of all forgetting God and the hope of the profane one shall perish. |
| 8:14 | Which his hope shall be cut off, and the spider's house his trust |
| 8:15 | He shall lean upon his house and it shall not stand: he shall hold fast upon it, and it shall not rise up. |
| 8:16 | It was moist before the sun, and its sprout will come forth upon his garden. |
| 8:17 | His roots were entwined upon a heap, he shall see a house of stones. |
| 8:18 | If he should swallow him down from his place, and it lied upon it: I saw thee not |
| 8:19 | Behold, this the rejoicing of his way, and from the dust shall they cause another to grow. |
| 8:20 | Behold, God will not reject the blameless one, and he will not take hold upon the hand of those doing evil: |
| 8:21 | Till he shall fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with shouts of joy. |
| 8:22 | They hating thee shall put on shame; and the tent of the unjust shall not be. |
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
The Julia Evelina Smith Parker Translation is considered the first complete translation of the Bible into English by a woman. The Bible was titled The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues, and was published in 1876.
Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Connecticut had a working knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Her father had been a Congregationalist minister before he became a lawyer. Having read the Bible in its original languages, she set about creating her own translation, which she completed in 1855, after a number of drafts. The work is a strictly literal rendering, always translating a Greek or Hebrew word with the same word wherever possible. Smith accomplished this work on her own in the span of eight years (1847 to 1855). She had sought out no help in the venture, even writing, "I do not see that anybody can know more about it than I do." Smith's insistence on complete literalness, plus an effort to translate each original word with the same English word, combined with an odd notion of Hebrew tenses (often translating the Hebrew imperfect tense with the English future) results in a translation that is mechanical and often nonsensical. However, such a translation if overly literal might be valuable to consult in checking the meaning of some individual verse. One notable feature of this translation was the prominent use of the Divine Name, Jehovah, throughout the Old Testament of this Bible version.
In 1876, at 84 years of age some 21 years after completing her work, she finally sought publication. The publication costs ($4,000) were personally funded by Julia and her sister Abby Smith. The 1,000 copies printed were offered for $2.50 each, but her household auction in 1884 sold about 50 remaining copies.
The translation fell into obscurity as it was for the most part too literal and lacked any flow. For example, Jer. 22:23 was given as follows: "Thou dwelling in Lebanon, building as nest in the cedars, how being compassionated in pangs coming to thee the pain as in her bringing forth." However, the translation was the only Contemporary English translation out of the original languages available to English readers until the publication of The British Revised Version in 1881-1894.(The New testament was published in 1881, the Old in 1884, and the Apocrypha in 1894.) This makes it an invaluable Bible for its period.