Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 8:1 | Who as the wise one? and who will know the interpretation of the word? The wisdom of man shall enlighten his face, and the hard of face shall be hated. |
| 8:2 | I am to watch the king's mouth by reason of the oath of God. |
| 8:3 | Thou shalt not hasten going from his face: thou shalt not stand by the word of evil; for he shall do all that he will desire. |
| 8:4 | Wheresoever the word of a king, it is powerful: and who shall say to him, What wilt thou do? |
| 8:5 | He watching the command knew no evil word: and time and judgment the wise one will know. |
| 8:6 | To every inclination there is time and judgment; for man's evil is great upon him. |
| 8:7 | For he will not know what shall be: for as it shall be who shall announce to him? |
| 8:8 | No man having power in spirit to restrain the spirit: and no power in the day of death: and no sending forth in war; and injustice shall not deliver its possessors. |
| 8:9 | All this I saw, and giving my heart to every work which was done under the sun: a time which man had power overman for evil to him. |
| 8:10 | And so then I saw the unjust buried, and they came and they will go from the holy place, and they will be forgotten in the city where they did thus: also this is vanity. |
| 8:11 | Because a decree was not done quickly upon an evil work, for this the heart of the sons of man was filled in them to do evil. |
| 8:12 | Whoever sinned, doing evil a hundred, and it being prolonged to him, for also I know that it will be to those fearing God, who shall be afraid from his face. |
| 8:13 | And it shall not be good to the unjust one; he shall not lengthen the days as a shadow, for he feared not from before the face of God. |
| 8:14 | There is vanity which was done upon the earth; that there is the just which it comes upon them according to the work of the unjust: and there is the unjust, it comes upon them according to the work of the just. I said, Also this is vanity. |
| 8:15 | And I praised joy, because there is no good to man under the sun but to eat and to drink, and to rejoice: for this shall lodge with him in his labor the days of his life which God gave to him under the sun. |
| 8:16 | According as I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to see the labor that was done upon the earth: for also in the day and in the night he saw not sleep with his eyes. |
| 8:17 | And I saw all the work of God, that no man shall be able to find out the work that was done under the sun in whatsoever a man shall labor to seek out, and he shall not find: and also if the wise one shall say to know, he shall not be able to find. |
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.