Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Psalm 110:1
The LORD said unto my Lord. Two different Hebrew words, and English uses one.
Psalm 110:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine a sentence where two people are both called sir, and your only clue to which is which is how the printer set the type. That is what an English Bible is doing here, and almost nobody has been told the convention.
Because it is the Old Testament verse the New Testament quotes more than any other, the whole argument turns on two words that English prints identically, and the King James actually shows you the difference if you know to look at the capitals.
The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Every version distinguishes them by capitalisation: LORD in small capitals for the first, Lord for the second. No version uses two different words, and the convention is explained in a preface most readers skip.
יְהוָה YHWH · H3068 / אֲדֹנִי adoni · H113
The first word is the divine name, printed LORD in small capitals wherever it occurs. The second is adoni, my lord, an ordinary term used of human superiors. So the line is the divine name speaking to someone the psalmist calls my lord. Jesus builds an argument on exactly this at Matthew 22:41-46, and it only works if the two are different.
English has one word for both and has solved it with typography rather than vocabulary. That works in print and fails completely when read aloud, which is how most people meet the verse.
Small capitals in an English Old Testament are not emphasis. They mark the divine name. Once you know that, a large number of verses become visible that were not before.
Nothing is disputed in translation. The convention is universal and the failure is that it is never taught, so a verse the New Testament quotes constantly reads as a repetition in English.
- Quoted or alluded to at Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Acts 2:34-35; Hebrews 1:13 and elsewhere
- adoni of human superiors: Genesis 23:6; 1 Samuel 22:12
- The small-capital convention is set out in the prefaces of the King James, ESV and NASB
