Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 5:1 | And Philisteim took the ark of God, and they will bring it from the Stone of Help to Ashdod. |
| 5:2 | And Philisteim will take the ark of God and bring it to the house of Dagon, and they will set it up by Dagon. |
| 5:3 | And the Ashdodites will rise early on the morrow, and behold, Dagon fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of Jehovah. And they will take Dagon. and will turn him back to his place. |
| 5:4 | And they will rise early in the morning, and behold, Dagon fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of Jehovah: and the head of Dagon, and the two palms of his hands cut off upon the threshold; only Dagon was left upon him. |
| 5:5 | Therefore the priests of Dagon, and all coming into Dagon's house, will not tread upon the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod even to this day. |
| 5:6 | And the hand of Jehovah will be heavy upon the Ashdodites, and he will lay them waste and smite them with tumors, Ashdod and her bounds. |
| 5:7 | And the men of Ashdod will see that it is thus, and they will say, The ark of the God of Israel shall not dwell with us, for his hand was hard upon us and upon Dagon our god. |
| 5:8 | And they will send and gather all the princes of Philisteim to them, and they will say, What shall we do to the ark of the God of Israel? And they will say, To Gath shall the ark of the God of Israel be turned about: and they will turn the ark of the God of Israel about |
| 5:9 | And it will be after they turned it about, and the hand of Jehovah will be against the city with a very great consternation: and he will smite the men of the city from small and even to great, and tumors will break forth to them. |
| 5:10 | And they will send the ark of God to Ekron. And it will be when the ark of God came to Ekron, and the Ekronites will cry out, saying, They turned about to me the ark of the God of Israel to kill me and my people. |
| 5:11 | And they will send and gather all the princes of Philisteim, and they will say, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and it shall turn back to its place, and it shall not slay me and my people: for the consternation of death was in all the city; the hand of God was greatly heavy there. |
| 5:12 | And the men who died not were struck with tumors: and the cry of the city will go up to the heavens. |
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.