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 19:4
Their line is gone out through all the earth. Paul quotes it in Romans 10:18 as their voice, or sound.
Psalm 19:4, in every translation this tool compares.
English line and voice are entirely different words describing entirely different things, a measuring cord versus a sound. The Hebrew word here, qav, line, and the Greek word Paul quotes, phthongos, sound, look close enough in Hebrew consonants, qavam versus qolam, that the difference could be an old textual variant rather than a loose paraphrase.
Because the Hebrew word here, line, and the Greek word Paul quotes in Romans 10:18, sound or voice, are different enough that scholars have long suspected either a genuine textual variant or a deliberate reinterpretation, with Paul's whole argument in Romans depending on the version he quotes.
The Hebrew Masoretic Text reads their line, kav, has gone out. The Septuagint, and Paul quoting it at Romans 10:18, reads their voice or sound has gone out, following Greek phthongos.
קַו qav (line) / קוֹל qol (voice) · H6957 / H6963
Qav, line or measuring cord, and qol, voice or sound, are close enough in Hebrew spelling, qavam versus qolam, that some scholars propose the Septuagint's translators worked from a manuscript that actually read qolam, voice, rather than qavam, line, a genuine textual variant rather than a free translation choice. Others read it as an interpretive extension, since a cord can also mean a musical string, and a string produces a sound.
English readers of Romans 10:18 meet voice or sound with no indication that the Old Testament passage being quoted, in most English Bibles' Old Testament translation, actually says line, a visibly different word, leaving the connection between the two texts looking looser than it may actually be.
A New Testament quotation that uses a noticeably different word than your English Old Testament translation is worth checking against the Septuagint. It may reflect a genuine textual variant in the underlying Hebrew consonants rather than loose paraphrase.
Line, following the Masoretic Text, pictures a measuring cord stretched across creation, marking out its extent. Voice or sound, following the Septuagint and Paul's quotation, pictures creation's silent testimony as itself a kind of speech, the reading Paul's argument in Romans 10 needs to make its point about creation preaching to all nations.
- Septuagint phthongos, sound, at Psalm 19:4 (18:5 LXX)
- Paul's quotation at Romans 10:18
- qav/qol's close consonantal similarity as the likely source of the variant
