Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 5:1 | My son, attend to my wisdom; incline thine ear to understanding: |
| 5:2 | To watch meditation, and thy lips shall guard knowledge. |
| 5:3 | For the lips of the strange woman will drop droppings of the honeycomb, and her palate is smooth above oil: |
| 5:4 | And her latter state being bitter as wormwood; sharp as a two-mouthed sword. |
| 5:5 | Her feet go down to death; her steps will hold fast to hades. |
| 5:6 | Lest thou shalt make level the path of life, her tracks wavered; thou wilt not know. |
| 5:7 | And now, ye sons, hear to me, and ye shall not depart from the words of my mouth. |
| 5:8 | Remove far off from her thy way, and thou shalt not draw near to the door of her house: |
| 5:9 | Lest thou shalt give thy strength to others, and thy years to the cruel: |
| 5:10 | Lest strangers shall be filled with thy strength, and thy labors in the house of strangers; |
| 5:11 | And thou didst lament in thy latter state, in the consuming of thy flesh and thy fulness, |
| 5:12 | And thou saidst, How did I hate instruction, and my heart despise reproofs |
| 5:13 | And I heard not to the voice of him teaching me, and I inclined not mine ear to him instructing me. |
| 5:14 | As I was almost in all evil in the midst of the convocation and the assembly. |
| 5:15 | Drink water from thy pit, and flowing from the midst of thy well. |
| 5:16 | Thy fountains shall be dispersed without; in the broad places streams of waters. |
| 5:17 | They shall be to thee alone, and not strangers with thee. |
| 5:18 | Thy fountain shall be blessed: and rejoice from the wife of thy youth. |
| 5:19 | The hind of loves and the wild goat of grace; her breasts shall satiate thee in all time; thou shalt always wander in her loves. |
| 5:20 | And wherefore, my son, wilt thou wander with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? |
| 5:21 | For before the eyes of Jehovah are the ways of man, and he makes level all his tracks. |
| 5:22 | His iniquities shall take the unjust one, and with the cords of his sins shall he be held fast. |
| 5:23 | He shall die in not being instructed, and he shall wander in the multitude of his folly. |
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.