Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 23:1 | Thou shalt not take up a false report: thou shalt not put thy hand with the unjust one to be a witness of wrong. |
| 23:2 | Thou shalt not be after multitudes for evil; thou shalt not answer for the multitude to stretch out after multitudes to pervert justice. |
| 23:3 | And the poor one thou shalt not make proud in his cause. |
| 23:4 | If thou shalt meet thine enemy's ox or his ass wandering, turning back, thou shalt turn him back to him. |
| 23:5 | If thou shalt see the ass of him hating thee, lying down under his load, and thou didst desist from cutting loose for him, releasing, thou shall release with him. |
| 23:6 | Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of thy needy in his cause. |
| 23:7 | From the word of falsehood thou shalt go far away; and the innocent and the just one thou shalt not kill: for I will not justify the unjust one. |
| 23:8 | And thou shalt not take a gift; for the gift will blind the seeing, and will pervert just words. |
| 23:9 | Thou shalt not press the stranger: and ye knew the soul of the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt |
| 23:10 | Six years shalt thou sow thy land, and gather its produce: |
| 23:11 | And the seventh thou shalt remit, and let it be; and the poor of thy people shall eat; and the remains, the beast of the field shall eat. So shalt thou do to thy vineyard and to thy olive tree. |
| 23:12 | Six days thou shalt do thy works, and in the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox shall rest, and thine ass, and the son of thy maid shall be refreshed, and the stranger. |
| 23:13 | And in all which I said to you ye shall watch; and ye shall not call to mind the name of other gods; it shall not be heard above thy mouth. |
| 23:14 | Three times thou shalt keep a festival to me in the year. |
| 23:15 | Thou shalt watch the festival of unleavened: seven days shalt thou eat unleavened as I commanded thee according to the appointment of the month Abib; for in it thou camest forth out of Egypt: and they shall not be seen before me empty. |
| 23:16 | And the festival of the harvest, the first fruits of thy works, which thou shalt sow in the field: and the festival of gathering in the going out of the year, in thy gathering thy works out of the field. |
| 23:17 | Three times in the year every male of thine shall be seen to the face of the Lord Jehovah. |
| 23:18 | Thou shalt not sacrifice upon leaven: the blood of my sacrifice, and the fat of my festival shall not remain over till morning. |
| 23:19 | The sacrifice of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring to the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother's milk. |
| 23:20 | Behold, I send a messenger before thee to guard thee in the way, and to bring thee to the place which I prepared. |
| 23:21 | Watch from his face, and hear to his voice; thou shalt not rebel against him: he will not lift up your transgression; for my name is in the midst of him. |
| 23:22 | For if hearing thou shalt hear to his voice, and to all that I shall speak; and I was an enemy to thine enemies, and I was hostile to thine adversaries. |
| 23:23 | For my messenger shall go before thee, and bring thee to the Amorites, and the Hittites and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I destroyed them. |
| 23:24 | Thou shalt not worship to their gods, and thou shalt not serve them, and thou shalt not do according to their works: for destroying, thou shalt destroy them, and breaking, thou shalt break in pieces their pillars. |
| 23:25 | And serve ye Jehovah your God, and he blessed thy bread, and thy waters; and I turned away disease from the midst of thee. |
| 23:26 | And there shall not be bereaving of children or barren upon thy land: the number of thy days I will fill up. |
| 23:27 | I will send my terror before thee and I killed all the people which thou shalt come to them; and I gave all thine enemies the back to thee. |
| 23:28 | And I sent hornets before thee and to drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee. |
| 23:29 | I will not drive them out from thy face in one year, lest the land shall be desolate, and the beast of the field multiply upon thee. |
| 23:30 | By little and little I will drive them out from thy face, till when thou shalt be fruitful and thou didst inherit the land. |
| 23:31 | And I put thy bounds from the sea of sedge, and even to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert even to the river: for I will give into your hand those inhabiting the land, and thou drove them out from before thee. |
| 23:32 | Thou shalt not make a covenant with them and to their gods. |
| 23:33 | They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they shall cause thee to sin against me: if thou shalt serve their gods, surely shall it be to thee for a snare. |
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.