Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 16:1 | and the word of Jehovah was to me, saying, |
| 16:2 | Thou shalt not take to thee a wife, and sons and daughters shall not be to thee in this place. |
| 16:3 | For thus said Jehovah concerning the sons, and concerning the daughters born in this place, and concerning their mothers bearing them, and concerning their fathers begetting them in this land: |
| 16:4 | Deaths of diseases shall they die; they shall not be lamented, and they shall not be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth, and by sword and by famine shall they be consumed, and their carcass was for food to the birds of the heavens and to the beasts of the earth. |
| 16:5 | For thus said Jehovah, Thou shalt not go in to the house of wailing, and thou shalt not go to lament and thou shalt not deplore for them, for I took away my peace from this people, says Jehovah; -kindness and mercies. |
| 16:6 | And the great and small died in this land: they shall not be buried, and they shall not lament for them, and none shall cut himself or make bald for them: |
| 16:7 | They shall not break bread in mourning to comfort him for the dead; and they shall not give them to drink the cup of consolations for his father and for his mother. |
| 16:8 | And to the house of drinking thou shalt not go in to sit with them to eat and to drink. |
| 16:9 | For thus said Jehovah of armies, God of Israel: Behold me causing to cease from this place to your eyes and in your days the voice of gladness and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. |
| 16:10 | And being when thou shalt announce to this people all these words, and they said to thee, For what did Jehovah speak against us all this great evil? and what our iniquities? and what our sins which we sinned to Jehovah our God? |
| 16:11 | And say to them, Because your fathers forsook me, says Jehovah, and went after other gods, and they will serve them and worship to them, and they forsook me, and my law they watched not; |
| 16:12 | And ye acted wickedly to do more than your fathers; and behold, you going a man after the stubbornness of his evil heart for not hearing to me. |
| 16:13 | And I cast you out from this land upon the land which ye knew not, ye and your fathers; and ye served there other gods day and night, where I will not give to you mercy. |
| 16:14 | For this, behold, the days coming, says Jehovah, and it shall no more be said, Jehovah lives who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt; |
| 16:15 | But Jehovah lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands where he thrust them away there: and I turned them back upon their land which I gave to their fathers. |
| 16:16 | Behold me sending for many fishers, says Jehovah, and they fished them; and after this I will send for many hunters, and they hunted them from every mountain, and from every hill, and from the clefts of the rocks. |
| 16:17 | For mine eyes are upon all their ways, and they were not hid from my face, and their iniquity was not concealed from before mine eyes. |
| 16:18 | And I requited first double their iniquity and their sin, for their defiling my land, with the carcasses of their abominable things, and their abominations they filled up mine inheritance. |
| 16:19 | O Jehovah, my strength and my fortress, and my refuge in days of straits, to thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and they shall say, Surely our fathers inherited falsehood, vanity, and no receiving profit in them. |
| 16:20 | Shall man make to himself gods, and they not gods? |
| 16:21 | For this, behold me causing them to know in this once, I will cause them to know my hand and my strength; and they shall know that my name is Jehovah. |
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.