Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 8:1 | Who will give thee as a brother to me, sucking the breasts of my mother? I shall find thee without, I shall kiss thee; also they shall not despise me. |
| 8:2 | I will lead thee, I will bring thee to the house of my mother; thou wilt teach me: I will give thee to drink from spiced wine from the new wine of my pomegranate. |
| 8:3 | His left hand under my head, and his right shall embrace me. |
| 8:4 | I adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, why will ye awake, and why will ye rouse love till he shall desire?' |
| 8:5 | Who this coming up from the desert, leaning herself upon her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused thee: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she bearing thee, brought forth . |
| 8:6 | Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love was strong as death; jealousy hard as hades: its flames, flames of fire, flames of Jehovah. |
| 8:7 | Many waters shall not be able to quench love, and rivers shall not overwhelm it: if a man shall give all the riches of his house for love, despising, they shall be despised for him. |
| 8:8 | A little sister to us, and no breasts to her: what shall we do for our sister in the day it shall be spoken for her? |
| 8:9 | If she be a wall, we will build upon her a fortress of silver: and if she is a door we will bind upon her a tablet of cedar. |
| 8:10 | I am a wall, and my breasts as towers: then was I in his eyes as finding peace. |
| 8:11 | A vineyard was to Solomon in the place of a multitude; he gave the vineyards to those watching; each shall bring in its fruit a thousand of silver. |
| 8:12 | My vineyard to me before me: a thousand to thee, O Solomon, and two hundred to those watching its fruit. |
| 8:13 | Thou sitting in the gardens, the companions attending to thy voice: cause thou me to hear. |
| 8:14 | Flee, my beloved, and be it likened to thee to the roe or to the fawn of the hinds upon the mountains of spices. |
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.