Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 109:1 | To the overseer, to David a chanting. O God of my praise, thou wilt not be silent; |
| 109:2 | For the mouth of the unjust, and the mouth of deceit opened against me; they eke with me the tongue of false-hood. |
| 109:3 | And with words of hatred they surrounded me, and they will war with me gratuitously. |
| 109:4 | For my love they will oppose me: and I for prayer. |
| 109:5 | And they will set against me evil instead of good, and hatred for my love. |
| 109:6 | Appoint over him the unjust one, and the adversary shall stand at his right hand. |
| 109:7 | In his being judged he shall come forth condemned: and his prayer shall be for sin. |
| 109:8 | His days shall be few; his charge another shall take. |
| 109:9 | His sons shall be orphans, and his wife a widow. |
| 109:10 | And shaking his sons shall wander about, and they asked and sought from their desolations. |
| 109:11 | The creditor shall lay snares for all which is to him, and strangers shall plunder his labor. |
| 109:12 | There shall not be to him any drawing out mercy, and there shall not be any compassionating to his orphans |
| 109:13 | His descendants shall be for cutting off; in the later generation their name shall be wiped off. |
| 109:14 | The iniquity of his fathers will be in remembrance to Jehovah, and the sins of his mother shall not be wiped of |
| 109:15 | They shall be before Jehovah always, and their remembrance shall be cut off from the earth. |
| 109:16 | Because he remembered not to do mercy, and he will pursue the poor and needy man to slay the dejected of heart. |
| 109:17 | And he will love cursing, and it shall come to him: and he delighted not in praise, and it shall be far from him. |
| 109:18 | And he will put on cursing as his garment, and it shall come into his midst as water, and as oil into his bones. |
| 109:19 | It shall be to him as the garment shall cover him, and for a girdle it shall gird him always. |
| 109:20 | This the doing of those lying in wait for me from Jehovah, and speaking evil against my soul. |
| 109:21 | And thou Jehovah my Lord do with me for sake of thy name: for good thy mercy, deliver thou me. |
| 109:22 | For poor and needy am I, and my heart wounded in my midst. |
| 109:23 | As the shadow according to its declining I was gone: I was shaken off as the locust. |
| 109:24 | My knees were weak from fasting, and my flesh failed from fatness. |
| 109:25 | And I was a reproach to them: they will see me and they will shake the head. |
| 109:26 | Help me, O Jehovah my God: save me according to thy mercy: |
| 109:27 | And they shall know that this is thy hand; thou, O Jehovah, didst it. |
| 109:28 | They will curse and thou wilt bless: they arose and they shall be ashamed; and thy servant shall be glad. |
| 109:29 | They lying in wait for me shall put on shame, and they shall be covered with their shame as an upper garment |
| 109:30 | I will praise Jehovah greatly with my mouth; and in the midst of many will I praise him. |
| 109:31 | For he will stand at the right hand of the needy to save his soul from the judges. |
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.