Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 15:1 | and EliPhaz the Temanite will answer and say, |
| 15:2 | Shall a wise one answer knowledge of wind, and fill his belly with the east wind? |
| 15:3 | Reproving with words he shall not profit, and speeches will be of no use in them. |
| 15:4 | Also thou wilt bring to nought, fear, and thou wilt withhold meditation before God. |
| 15:5 | For thy mouth will accustom itself to thine iniquity, and thou wilt choose the tongue of the crafty. |
| 15:6 | Thy mouth will condemn thee, and not I: and thy lips will testify against thee. |
| 15:7 | Shalt thou be the firm man born? and hadst thou a beginning before the hills? |
| 15:8 | Shalt thou hear in the consultation of God? and wilt thou reserve wisdom to thyself? |
| 15:9 | What knewest thou and we shall not know? wilt thou understand and it not be with us? |
| 15:10 | Also the gray headed and old man with us, great of days above thy fathers. |
| 15:11 | Is it small with thee the consolations of God? and a word covered with thee? |
| 15:12 | Why shall thy heart take thee? and why shall thine eyes wink? |
| 15:13 | That thou wilt turn thy spirit against God, and thou broughtest words from thy mouth? |
| 15:14 | What is man that he will be clean? and that he will be just, being born of woman? |
| 15:15 | Behold, in his holy ones he will, not trust; and the heavens were not clean in his eyes. |
| 15:16 | How much more abominable and corrupt is man drinking iniquity as water! |
| 15:17 | I will show thee, hear to me; and that I saw I will recount; |
| 15:18 | Which the wise ones will announce, and he hid it not from their fathers. |
| 15:19 | To them alone the earth was given, and a stranger passed not in the midst of them. |
| 15:20 | All the days the unjust one himself being pained, and numbering the years they were hidden to him terrifying. |
| 15:21 | The voice of fears in his ears: in peace he destroying shall come upon him. |
| 15:22 | He will not believe to turn back from darkness, and he was waited for by the sword. |
| 15:23 | He wandered about for bread, where he knew that the day of darkness was ready at his hand. |
| 15:24 | Straitness and distress shall terrify him; they shall overpower him as a king ready for war. |
| 15:25 | For he stretched forth his hand against God, and he will strengthen himself against the Almighty. |
| 15:26 | He will run against him upon the neck, upon the thicknesses of his shields: |
| 15:27 | For he covered his face with his fat, and he will make fatness upon the flank |
| 15:28 | And he will dwell in cities out off, the houses shall not be inhabited by them, which were ready for heaps. |
| 15:29 | He shall not be rich, and his wealth shall not rise up; their possession shall not extend upon the earth. |
| 15:30 | He shall not depart from darkness; the flame shall dry up his suckers, and by the breath of his mouth shall he depart |
| 15:31 | He being deceived shall not trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his compensation. |
| 15:32 | Before his day it shall be completed, and his branch was not green. |
| 15:33 | He will shake off as a vine his unripe grapes, and he will cast his flower as the olive. |
| 15:34 | For the assembly of the profane is hard, and fire consumed the tents of the gift |
| 15:35 | He conceiving trouble and he bringing forth vanity, and their belly shall prepare deceit |
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.