Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 35:1 | And the word of the Lord will be to me, saying, |
| 35:2 | Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it |
| 35:3 | And say to it, Thus said the Lord Jehovah: Behold me against thee, O mount Seir; and I stretched out my hand upon thee a desolation and an amazement |
| 35:4 | I will set thy cities a waste, and thou shalt be a desolation, and thou knewest that I am Jehovah. |
| 35:5 | Because there was a perpetual enmity to thee, and thou wilt pour out the sons of Israel by the hands of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of iniquity the end: |
| 35:6 | For this, I live, says the Lord Jehovah, for I will make thee for blood and blood shall pursue thee: since thou hatedst not blood, and blood shall pursue thee. |
| 35:7 | And I gave mount Seir for a desolation, and desolation, and I cut off from it him passing through and him turning back. |
| 35:8 | And I filled his mountains with his wounded: in thy hills and in thy valleys, and all thy torrents the wounded of the sword shall fall in them: |
| 35:9 | I will give thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not be inhabited: and ye knew that I am Jehovah. |
| 35:10 | Because of thy saying, The two nations and the two lands shall be to me, and we will possess it; and Jehovah was there: |
| 35:11 | For this, I live, says the Lord Jehovah, and I did according to thine anger and according to thine envy which thou didst in thy hatred against them; and I was known among them according to that I will judge thee. |
| 35:12 | And thou knewest that I am Jehovah; I heard all thy reproaches which thou spakest against the mountains of Israel, saying, They were given to us a desolation to consume. |
| 35:13 | And ye will be magnified against me with your mouth, and ye multiplied your words against me: I heard. |
| 35:14 | Thus said the Lord Jehovah: When all the earth rejoiced I will make thee a desolation. |
| 35:15 | For thy rejoicing at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was a desolation, thus will I do to thee: thou shalt be a desolation O mount Seir, and all Edom, all of it: and they shall know that I am 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.