H108

• {"n":"Genesis 2:6","s":"A mist went up. A word used only here and once in Job, and nobody is certain what it names.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-2-6","r":"Genesis 2:6","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most English versions read mist or streams. The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate both read spring or fountain, not mist, showing the fog reading is not the oldest one on record."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a word that survives in only two sentences of an entire library. Every dictionary entry for it is built from those two sentences alone. Now picture two ancient translations disagreeing about which of two very different pictures, fog or flood, the word was even pointing at."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Ed occurs at Genesis 2:6 and Job 36:27, and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The traditional mist reading leans on the Job passage; an alternative connects the word to Akkadian edu, a flood or high water, which would make the verse describe subterranean water welling up to irrigate the ground rather than fog settling on it."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English mist and spring point to two different weather pictures, and a word attested twice cannot arbitrate between them. Whichever English word a translator picks quietly closes a question the Hebrew itself leaves open."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A word this rare is a live question, not a settled fact, however confident a single English gloss makes it look. Check how many times a word occurs before resting an argument on its dictionary definition."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Mist keeps the older picture of dew or fog settling. Spring or stream follows the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the proposed Akkadian cognate, and fits a garden being irrigated by water rising from below rather than settling from above. Both are defensible; neither is provable from two data points."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d0\u05b5\u05d3 ed \u00b7 H108"}],"src":["Only two occurrences: Genesis 2:6; Job 36:27","Septuagint reads pege, spring or fountain, at Genesis 2:6; the Vulgate reads fons, fountain","Proposed cognate: Akkadian edu, flood or high water"]}