Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 4:1 | And it will be evil to Jonah, a great evil, and it will kindle to him. |
| 4:2 | And he will pray to Jehovah and say, Ah, now, O Jehovah, was not this my word while I was upon my land? For this I anticipated to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that thou art merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and of much kindness, and lamenting for evil. |
| 4:3 | And now, O Jehovah, take now my soul from me, for it is good for me to die rather than for me to live. |
| 4:4 | And Jehovah will say, Didst thou well for thee to be angry? |
| 4:5 | And Jonah will go out of the city, and sit from the east to the city, and he make to him there a tent, and he will sit under it in the shadow, even till he shall see what will be upon the city. |
| 4:6 | And Jehovah God will appoint a gourd, and it will come up from above to Jonah to be a shadow over his head to deliver to him from his evil. And Jonah will rejoice over the gourd with great joy. |
| 4:7 | And God will appoint a worm in the going up of the morning for the morrow, and it will strike the gourd, and it will dry up. |
| 4:8 | And it will be as the sun rose, and God will appoint a sultry east wind; and the sun struck upon the head of Jonah, and he will faint, and he will ask his soul to die, and say, It is good for me to die rather than live. |
| 4:9 | And God will say to Jonah, Was it well to kindle to thee for the gourd? And he will say, It was well to kindle to me, even to death. |
| 4:10 | And Jehovah will say, Thou didst spare for the gourd, which thou didst not labor for it, and thou didst not cause it to grow; it was the youth of a night, and the son of a night perished. |
| 4:11 | And shall I not spare for Nineveh the great city which there is in it more than one hundred and twenty thousand men which knew not between his right hand to his left, and many cattle? |
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.