Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 17:1 | The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus being taken away from a city, and it was a falling heap of rubbish. |
| 17:2 | The cities of Aroer were forsaken : they shall be for flocks, and they lay down, and none terrifying. |
| 17:3 | And the fortress ceased from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Aram: they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, says Jehovah of armies. |
| 17:4 | And it was in that day the glory of Jacob shall be feeble, and the fatness of his flesh shall waste away. |
| 17:5 | And it was as he gathered the harvest of standing grain, and he shall reap the ears with his arm; and it was as he gathering ears in the valley of Rephaim. |
| 17:6 | And he left in it gleaning, as the beating of the olive tree, two, three berries upon the head of the summit, four, five in the branches of its fruit, says Jehovah, God of Israel. |
| 17:7 | In that day shall the man look upon him making him, and his eyes shall look to the Holy One of Israel |
| 17:8 | And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and what his fingers made he shall not see, and the statues and the images. |
| 17:9 | In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken thicket, and the summit which they forsook from the face of the sons of Israel: and it was a desolation. |
| 17:10 | For thou didst forget the God of thy salvation, and didst not remember the rock of thy fortress, for this, thou shalt plant pleasant plants, and thou shalt sow it with vine shoots of the stranger. |
| 17:11 | In the day of thy planting thou shalt hedge in, and in the morning thou shalt make thy seed fruitful: the harvest a heap in the day of thy possession and incurable pain. |
| 17:12 | Wo to the multitude of many peoples; they will sound as the sound of the seas; and the tumult to the nations shall rage as the tumult of great waters. |
| 17:13 | To the nations as the tumult of many waters they shall rage, and he rebuked him and he fled from far off and was pursued as the chief of the mountains before the wind and as stubble before the whirlwind. |
| 17:14 | For the time of evening, behold, terror; before morning he is not This the portion of those plundering us, and the lot of those spoiling us. |
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.