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 40:6
Mine ears hast thou opened. Hebrews 10:5 quotes it as a body hast thou prepared me, following the Greek, not the Hebrew.
Psalm 40:6, in every translation this tool compares.
English ears and English body describe entirely different things. The Hebrew verse pictures God carving or digging open a servant's ears, attentive obedience pictured physically. The Greek Septuagint, which Hebrews quotes directly, instead reads a body prepared, generalizing from the specific body part, ears, to the whole body, a deliberate interpretive move, not an error.
Because the Hebrew says mine ears hast thou dug open, a vivid image of attentive obedience, while Hebrews 10:5 quotes this verse as a body hast thou prepared me, following the Septuagint's Greek rather than the Hebrew, a real and consequential difference the author of Hebrews builds a whole argument about the incarnation on.
Old Testament translations of the Psalm read ears, following the Hebrew. New Testament translations of Hebrews 10:5 read a body, following the Greek Septuagint that Hebrews itself quotes.
אָזְנַיִם כָּרִיתָ לִּי oznayim karita li (Hebrew) / σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μοι soma de katertiso moi (LXX, behind Hebrews 10:5)
Oznayim karita li, ears you have dug for me, is a vivid Hebrew idiom for being made attentive and obedient, evoking either a servant's pierced ear marking permanent service or simply the carving-open of hearing itself. The Septuagint's Greek translators rendered this soma de katertiso moi, a body you have prepared for me, generalizing from the specific detail, ears, to the whole body the ears belong to, and Hebrews 10:5 quotes that Greek version directly, building an argument about Christ's incarnate body on a translation choice the Hebrew text does not itself make.
English readers moving between the Old Testament Psalm and the New Testament's quotation of it encounter two different images, ears and body, with no built-in explanation that the difference traces back to a translation decision made centuries earlier by the Septuagint's Greek translators, one that the author of Hebrews inherited and built theology upon.
When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament and the wording differs noticeably from your Old Testament translation, check whether the quotation follows the Septuagint's Greek rather than the Hebrew original. This is common, and it is not evidence of error, but it is a real translation layer worth seeing.
Ears, following the Hebrew, keeps the psalm's own vivid image of attentive, obedient hearing. A body, following the Septuagint and Hebrews's quotation of it, generalizes that image into the whole incarnate body, the reading the book of Hebrews needs for its argument about Christ's bodily self-offering.
- Hebrew Masoretic Text of Psalm 40:6
- Septuagint's rendering, quoted directly at Hebrews 10:5
- Standard discussion of the Hebrews 10:5-7 quotation and its Septuagint basis
