Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 58:1 | Call with the throat; thou shalt not spare; as a trumpet lift up thy voice, and announce to my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sin. |
| 58:2 | And day, day, they will seek me, and delight to know my way as a nation who did justice and forsook not the judgment of his God: they will ask me the judgments of justice, they will delight to draw near to Gad. |
| 58:3 | For what did we fast, and thou sawest not? we humbled our soul and thou wilt not know? Behold, in the day of your fasting ye will find desire, and ye will exact all your labors. |
| 58:4 | behold, for contention and strife ye will fast, and to strike with the fist of injustice: ye shall not fast as today to cause your voice to be heard on high. |
| 58:5 | Will this be the fast I shall choose? a day for a man to humble his soul? to bend his head as a bulrush, and he will place sackcloth and ashes? wilt thou call this a fast and a day of acceptance to Jehovah. |
| 58:6 | Is not this the fast I shall choose? to loose the bands of injustice, to shake off the bundles of the yoke, and to send away the broken free, and ye shall break every yoke? |
| 58:7 | Is it not to break thy bread to the hungry, and thou shalt bring the wandering poor to thy house? when thou shalt see the naked and cover him; and thou shalt not hide from thy flesh. |
| 58:8 | Then shall thy light break forth as the dawn, and thy healing shall spring forth quickly: and thy justice going before thee; the glory of Jehovah shall gather thee. |
| 58:9 | Then shalt thou call and Jehovah will answer; thou shalt cry for help, and he will say, Behold me. If thou shalt take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the extending of the finger, and the word of vanity; |
| 58:10 | And thou shalt give out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the humble soul; and thy light rising in darkness,, and thy thick darkness as the noon. |
| 58:11 | And Jehovah led thee continually, and he satisfied thy soul in dry places, and he will make thy bones strong: and thou wed as a watered garden, and as a spring of water which its waters shall not deceive. |
| 58:12 | And from thee the old wastes were built; the foundations of generation and generation thou shalt raise them up, and it was called to thee, Walling the breach, Turning back the beaten paths to dwell in. |
| 58:13 | If thou shalt turn back thy foot from the Sabbath, doing thy delight in my holy day; and thou calledst to the Sabbath a delight for the holy of Jehovah, being honored; and thou honoredst him from doing thy ways, from finding thy delight, and speaking the word. |
| 58:14 | Then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah, and I caused thee to ride upon the heights of the earth, and I caused thee to eat the inheritance of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of Jehovah spake. |
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.