Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 15:1 | And it will be after days in days of the wheat harvest, and Samson will look after his wife with a kid of the goats; and he will say, I will go to my wife to the chamber. And her father gave him not to go in. |
| 15:2 | And her father will say, Saying, I said that hating, thou didst hate her, and I will give her to thy companion: is not her small sister good above her? Now she shall be to thee in her stead. |
| 15:3 | And Samson will say to them, This time I was more blameless than Philisteim if I shall do evil with them. |
| 15:4 | And Samson will go and will take three hundred foxes, and will take torches, and will turn tail to tail, and will put one torch between two tails in the midst |
| 15:5 | And he will kindle fire upon the torches and will send into the standing grain of Philisteim, and will burn up from the heap of sheaves and even to the standing grain, and even to the vineyard and the olive. |
| 15:6 | And Philisteim will say, Who did this? and they will say, Samson, son in-law of the Timnite, for he took his wife and he will give her to his companion. And Philisteim will go up and will burn her and her father with fire. |
| 15:7 | And Samson will say to them, If ye will do according to this, if I was avenged by you, and afterward I will desist. |
| 15:8 | And he will strike them leg upon thigh, a great smiting. And he will go down and dwell in the cleft of the rock Etam. |
| 15:9 | And Philisteim will go up and encamp against Judah and will be dispersed in Lehi. |
| 15:10 | And the men of Judah will say to them, Why came ye up against us? and they will say, To bind Samson we came up, to do to him as he did to us. |
| 15:11 | And three thousand men of Judah will go down to the cleft of the rock Etam, and they will say to Samson, Knewest thou not that Philisteim is ruling over us? and what this thou didst to us? and he will say to them, As they did to me, so did I to them. |
| 15:12 | And they will say to him, To bind thee we came down, to give thee into the hand of Philisteim. And Samson will say to them, Swear to me lest ye shall fall upon me yourselves. |
| 15:13 | And they will say to him, saying, No; but binding, we will bind thee and give thee into their hand: and killing, we will not kill thee. And they will bind him with two new cords and will bring him up from the rock. |
| 15:14 | He came even to Lehi, and Philisteim shouted at his meeting: and the spirit of Jehovah will come suddenly upon him, and the cords which were upon his arms will be as flax which was burnt in fire, and his bands will melt from off his hands. |
| 15:15 | And he will find the jaw-bone of an ass, fresh, and he will stretch forth his hand and take it and will strike with it a thousand men. |
| 15:16 | And Samson will say, With the jaw-bone of the ass, a heap, two heaps, with the jaw-bone of the ass I struck a thousand men. |
| 15:17 | And it will be when he finished to speak, and he will cast away the jawbone from his hand, and he will call that place, the lifting up the jaw-bone. |
| 15:18 | And he will thirst greatly, and he will call to Jehovah and will say, Thou gavest into the hand of thy servant this great salvation, and now shall I die with thirst and fall into the hand of Philisteim? |
| 15:19 | And God will rend the socket which is in the jaw-bone, and waters will come forth from it; and he will drink, and his spirit will turn back, and he will live. For this he called its name, the Fountain of him Calling, which is in Lehi even to this day. |
| 15:20 | And he will judge Israel in the days of Philisteim twenty years. |
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.