Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 4:1 | And thou son of man take to thee a brick, and give thou it before thee, and delineate upon it the city Jerusalem; |
| 4:2 | And give siege against it, and build a watch tower against it, and cast a mound against it, and give the camp against it, and set battering-rams against it round about |
| 4:3 | And thou, take to thee an iron pan and give it a wall of iron between thee and between the city: and prepare thy face against it, and she was in siege, and press upon her. This a sign to the house of Israel. |
| 4:4 | And lie thou upon thy left side, and put the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: the number of days which thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt lift up their iniquity. |
| 4:5 | And I gave to thee the years of their iniquity according to the number of days, three hundred and ninety days: and thou didst bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. |
| 4:6 | And finishing these, and thou didst lie upon thy right side the second time, and thou didst bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: a day for a year, a day for a year I gave it to thee, |
| 4:7 | And to the siege of Jerusalem thou shalt prepare thy face, and thine arm being uncovered and prophesy against her |
| 4:8 | And behold, I gave bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn from thy side to thy side, even to thy finishing the days of thy siege. |
| 4:9 | And thou, take to thee wheat, and barley, and the bean, and lentiles, and millet, and spelt, and give them into one vessel, and make them to thee for bread, the number of days which thou didst lie upon thy side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat it |
| 4:10 | An thy food which thou shalt eat by weight, twenty shekels for a day: from time even to time shalt thou eat it. |
| 4:11 | And water by measure shalt thou drink, the sixth of the bin: from time even to time shalt thou drink. |
| 4:12 | And thou shalt eat it cakes of barley, and it shall be baked with dung coming forth of man, before their eyes. |
| 4:13 | And Jehovah will say, Like this shall the sons of Israel eat their defiled bread among the nations where I shall thrust them away there. |
| 4:14 | And saying, Ah, Lord Jehovah behold, my soul not being defiled: and a carcass and the torn in pieces I ate not from my youth and even till now; there came not flesh of uncleanness into my mouth. |
| 4:15 | And he will say to me, See, I gave to thee the dung of oxen instead of man's dung, and make thy bread upon them. |
| 4:16 | And he will say to me, Son of man, behold me breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they ate bread by weight and with fear; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment |
| 4:17 | So that they shall want bread and water, and they were astonished, a man and his brother, and they were melted in their iniquity. |
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.