Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 19:1 | And thou, lift thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, |
| 19:2 | And say, What thy mother? a lioness: between lions she lay down, in the midst of young lions she brought up her whelps |
| 19:3 | And she will bring up one of her whelps: it was a young lion, and it will learn to rend the prey eating man. |
| 19:4 | And the nations will hear concerning him; in their pit he was taken, and they will bring him with hooks to the land of Egypt |
| 19:5 | And she will see that waiting her hope perished, and she will take one of her whelps setting him a young lion. |
| 19:6 | And he will go about in the midst of the lions; he was a young lion, and he will learn to tear in pieces the prey, eating man. |
| 19:7 | And he knew their palaces, and he laid waste their cities; and the land will be desolate and its fulness from the voice of his roaring. |
| 19:8 | And the nations will give against him round about from the provinces, and they will spread their net upon him, being taken in their pit |
| 19:9 | And they will give him in a prison with hooks, and they will bring him to the king of Babel: they will bring him into fastnesses so that his voice shall no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel. |
| 19:10 | Thy mother as a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and covered from much water. |
| 19:11 | And there will be to her rods of strength to the rods of those ruling, and his stature will be lifted up between the thick boughs, and he will be seen in his height from the multitude of his branches. |
| 19:12 | And she shall be plucked up in wrath, she was cast down to the earth, and the wind of the east dried up her fruit: the rods of her strength were broken and dried up, and the fire consumed them. |
| 19:13 | And now being planted in the desert, in a land of dryness and thirst |
| 19:14 | And a fire will go forth from a rod of her branches; it consumed her fruit, and there was not in her a rod of strength, a rod to rule. It is a lamentation, and it shall be for a lamentation. |
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.