Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 23:1 | And the king will send and gather to him all the old men of Judah and Jerusalem. |
| 23:2 | And the king will go up to the house of Jehovah and all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets, and all the people to the small, and even to the great: and he will read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant found in the house of Jehovah. |
| 23:3 | And the king will stand by the pillar, and he will cut out a covenant before Jehovah to go after Jehovah, and to watch his commands and his testimonies and his laws, with all the heart and with all the soul, and to raise up the words of this covenant written upon this book. And all the people will stand in the covenant |
| 23:4 | And the king will command Hilkiah the great priest and the priests of the second rank, and the watchers of the threshold to bring forth out of the temple of Jehovah all the vessels being made for Baal and for the image, and for all the army of the heavens: and they will burn them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and he lifted up their dust to the house of God. |
| 23:5 | And he caused the obscurations to cease which the kings of Judah gave, and he will burn incense in the heights in the cities of Judah, and those being round about Jerusalem, and those burning incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the army of the heavens. |
| 23:6 | And he will bring forth the image from the house of Jehovah from without Jerusalem to the torrent Kidron, and he will burn it by the torrent Kidron, and he will beat small to dust and cast the dust upon the grave of the sons of the people. |
| 23:7 | And he will break down the houses of the holy places, which were in the house of Jehovah, where the women wove there houses for the image. |
| 23:8 | And he will bring all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defile the heights where the priests burnt incense there from the hill even to the Well of the Oath, and he brake down the heights of the gates which were at the door of the gate of Joshua chief of the city which were at the left of a man in the gate of the city. |
| 23:9 | But the priests of the heights will not come up to the altar of Jehovah in Jerusalem, but they ate the unleavened in the midst of their brethren. |
| 23:10 | And he defiled Topheth in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, for a man not to cause his son and his daughter to pass through in fire to the king. |
| 23:11 | And he will take away the horses which the kings of Judah gave to the sun at the going in of the house of Jehovah into the chamber the king gave the eunuch which was in the open portico, and he burnt the chariots of the sun in fire. |
| 23:12 | And the altars which were upon the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz which the kings of Judah made, and the altars which Manasseh made in the two enclosures of the house of Jehovah, the king broke down, and he will break in pieces from thence, and cast their dust into the torrent Kidron. |
| 23:13 | And the heights which were before Jerusalem which were from the right to the mount of destruction which Solomon king of Israel built to Ashtaroth the abomination of the Sidonians, and to Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and to Milcom the abomination of the sons of Ammon the king defiled. |
| 23:14 | He brake in pieces the statues and he will cut off the images, and fill their places with bones of man. |
| 23:15 | And also the altar which was in the house of God, the height which Jeroboam son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin, made, also that altar and height he broke down and he will burn the height, and he beat small to dust, and he burnt the image. |
| 23:16 | And Josiah will turn and see the tombs which were there in the mount, and he will send and take the bones from the tombs and burn upon the altar, and he will defile it according to the word of Jehovah which the man of God called who called these words. |
| 23:17 | And he will say, What this pillar which I see? And the man of the city will say to him, The tomb of the man of God who came from Judah, and he will call these words which thou didst upon the altar of the house of God. |
| 23:18 | And he will say, Give rest to him; a man shall not move his bones; and they will let escape his bones and the bones of the prophet who came from Shomeron. |
| 23:19 | And also all the houses of the heights which were in the cities of Shomeron which the kings of Israel made to irritate, Josiah turned away, and he will do to them according to all the doings which he did in the house of God. |
| 23:20 | And he will sacrifice all the priests of the heights which were there upon the altars, and he will burn the bones of man upon them, and he will turn back to Jerusalem. |
| 23:21 | And the king will command all the people, saying, Do the passover to Jehovah your God, according to the writing upon the book of this covenant |
| 23:22 | For there was not done according to this passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel and all the days of the kings of Israel, and the kings of Judah. |
| 23:23 | But in the eighteenth year to king Josiah was done this passover to Jehovah in Jerusalem. |
| 23:24 | And also the necromancers, and the wizards and the family gods, and the blocks, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah took away in order to set up the words of the law written upon the book which Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Jehovah. |
| 23:25 | And like him was there not a king before him who turned back to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; and after him there arose not like him. |
| 23:26 | But Jehovah turned not back from the burning of his great anger, his anger which kindled against Judah because of all the provocations with which Manasseh irritated him. |
| 23:27 | And Jehovah will say, I will also turn away Judah from my face, as I turned away Israel, and I rejected this city which I chose, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there |
| 23:28 | And the rest of the words of Josiah, and all which he did, are they not written upon the book of the words of the days to the kings of Judah? |
| 23:29 | In his days Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, came up against the king of Assur, upon the river Phrath, and king Josiah will go up to his meeting, and he will kill him at Megiddo when he saw him. |
| 23:30 | And his servants will cause him to ride dead from Megiddo, and bring him to Jerusalem and bury him in his tomb. And the people of the land will take Jehoahaz son of Josiah, and they will anoint him and make him king instead of his father. |
| 23:31 | The son of twenty and three years was Jehoahaz in his reigning; and three months he reigned in Jerusalem. And his mother's name Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah. |
| 23:32 | And he will do evil in the eyes of Jehovah according to all which his fathers did. |
| 23:33 | And Pharaoh-Necho will bind him in Riblah in the land of Hamath, in reigning in Jerusalem; and he will give a fine upon the land, a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. |
| 23:34 | And Pharaoh-Necho will make Eliakim son of Josiah, king, instead of Josiah his father, and he will turn his name to Jehoiakim, and he took Jehoahaz: and he will come to Egypt and die there. |
| 23:35 | And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh; but he estiated the land to give the silver at the mouth of Pharaoh; a man according to his estimation, he exacted the silver and the gold with the people of the land to give to Pharaoh-Necho. |
| 23:36 | The son of twenty and five years was Jehoiakim in his reigning, and eleven years he reigned in Jerusalem. And his mother's name Zebudah, daughter of Pedaiah of Ramah. |
| 23:37 | And he will do evil in the eyes of Jehovah according to all which his fathers did. |
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.