Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 2:1 | My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and wilt hide my commands with thee; |
| 2:2 | To attend to wisdom thou wilt incline thine ear, thy heart to understanding; |
| 2:3 | For if thou will call to understanding, wilt give thy voice to understanding |
| 2:4 | If thou wilt seek her as silver, and dig for her as hidden treasure; |
| 2:5 | Then shalt thou understand the fear of Jehovah, and thou shalt find the knowledge of God. |
| 2:6 | For Jehovah will give wisdom: from his mouth knowledge and understanding. |
| 2:7 | He treasured up deliverance for the upright: a shield to those going in uprightness: |
| 2:8 | To guard the paths of judgment, and he will watch the way of his godly ones. |
| 2:9 | Then thou shalt understand justice and judgment and uprightness; every good track. |
| 2:10 | For wisdom shall come into thy heart, and knowledge shall be pleasant to thy soul. |
| 2:11 | Meditation shall watch over thee, understanding shall guard thee: |
| 2:12 | To deliver thee from the evil way, from the man speaking deceit; |
| 2:13 | Those forsaking the paths of straightness to go in the ways of darkness; |
| 2:14 | Those rejoicing to do evil will exult in the deceit of evil; |
| 2:15 | Whose paths are perverted, and in their tracks are bent aside: |
| 2:16 | To deliver thee from the strange woman, from the stranger making smooth her sayings; |
| 2:17 | Forsaking the friend of her youth, and forgetting the covenant of her God. |
| 2:18 | For her house sunk down to death, and her tracks to the shades. |
| 2:19 | All going in it shall not turn back, and they shall not overtake the paths of life. |
| 2:20 | So that thou shalt go in the way of the good, and thou shalt watch the paths of the just |
| 2:21 | For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the blameless shall remain in it |
| 2:22 | And the unjust shall be cut off from the land, and they transgressing shall be wiped off from it. |
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.