Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 7:1 | My son, watch my words, and thou shalt hide my commands with thee. |
| 7:2 | Watch my commands, and live; and my law as the pupil of thine eyes. |
| 7:3 | Bind them upon thy fingers, and write them upon the tablet of thine heart |
| 7:4 | Say to wisdom, Thou my sister; and thou shalt call knowledge to understanding: |
| 7:5 | To watch thyself from the strange woman, from the stranger making smooth her sayings. |
| 7:6 | For in the window of my house I looked forth through my lattice, |
| 7:7 | And I shall see among the simple, I shall perceive among the sons a youth wanting heart, |
| 7:8 | Passing in the street near her corner; and he will step the way of her house, |
| 7:9 | In the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the middle of the night, in the thick darkness: |
| 7:10 | And behold, a woman to his meeting, the attire of a harlot, and hidden of heart |
| 7:11 | She being noisy and perverse; her feet will not dwell in her house: |
| 7:12 | One time without, one time in the broad ways; and she will lie in wait near every corner. |
| 7:13 | She laid hold upon him and kissed to him; she strengthened her face, and she will say to him, |
| 7:14 | Sacrifices of peace upon me: today I repaid my vows. |
| 7:15 | For this, I shall come forth to thy meeting, to seek thy face, and I shall find thee. |
| 7:16 | With adornings I spread my bed, variegated with thread of Egypt |
| 7:17 | I sprinkled my bed with myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. |
| 7:18 | Come, we will be satisfied with loves till the morning: we will rejoice ourselves with loves. |
| 7:19 | For the man not in the house, he went in a way far off. |
| 7:20 | He took a bundle of silver in his hand; he will come to his house the day of the full moon. |
| 7:21 | With much of her talking she caused him to turn aside; with the smoothness of her lips she will thrust him away. |
| 7:22 | He went after her suddenly as the ox will go to the slaughter, and as the fetter for the correction of the foolish. |
| 7:23 | Till an arrow shall cleave his liver; as a bird hastening to the snare, and not knowing that it is for his soul. |
| 7:24 | And now, ye sons, hear to me, and attend to the sayings of my mouth. |
| 7:25 | And thy heart shall not deviate to her ways; thou shalt not wander in her beaten paths. |
| 7:26 | For she cast down many wounded, and the strong all being slain by her. |
| 7:27 | Her house the ways to hades, going down to the chambers of death. |
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.