H120

• {"n":"Genesis 9:6","s":"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The Hebrew word order is a mirror around the center.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-9-6","r":"Genesis 9:6","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, correctly following the sense, but English sentence order, subject before verb, cannot reproduce a mirror shape the way Hebrew's more flexible word order can."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English can say **the punishment fits the crime**, but that is commentary, a sentence about the sentence. Hebrew builds the fit directly into word order: sheds, blood, man, man, blood, shed, the same words running forward and then backward around a hinge in the middle."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"The Hebrew runs shofekh dam ha'adam, ba'adam damo yishafekh: sheds blood-of-man, by-man his-blood shall-be-shed. The verb for shedding opens the first half and closes the second, the noun for blood and the noun for man swap positions around the center, a structure grammarians call a chiasm, an A-B-C-C'-B'-A' pattern that visually and aurally enacts the very reciprocity, blood for blood, that the sentence is announcing."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English word order is comparatively fixed, subject-verb-object, so it cannot rearrange itself into a mirror shape the way Hebrew's freer word order allows here. A translation can state the principle of equal retribution but cannot make the sentence's shape perform it the way the Hebrew does."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Look for chiastic word order whenever a verse states a principle of exact correspondence, reciprocity, or reversal. Hebrew narrative and law use mirrored word order as a rhetorical device in its own right, not merely as a stylistic accident, and it rarely survives translation intact."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"The legal content itself isn't contested; every version agrees on the sense. What is lost is entirely formal: the chiastic shape itself, which is not a matter of word choice but of an arrangement English syntax is not free enough to reproduce."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e9\u05b9\u05c1\u05e4\u05b5\u05da\u05b0 \u05d3\u05b7\u05bc\u05dd \u05d4\u05b8\u05d0\u05b8\u05d3\u05b8\u05dd shofekh dam ha'adam (chiastic word order) \u00b7 H8210 + H1818 + H120"}],"src":["The chiastic ABCC'B'A' structure of the Hebrew clause: standard treatments of Hebrew poetic and legal syntax","Genesis 1:26-27's image of God as the stated ground for the principle"]}
• {"n":"Genesis 16:12","s":"He will be a wild man. The Hebrew literally reads a wild-donkey of a man, animal first.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-16-12","r":"Genesis 16:12","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads wild man, wild donkey of a man, or similar, generally preserving the sense but not always flagging the unusual word order that puts the animal image first."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English **a wild man** puts man first and wild as a description. Hebrew here reverses that: pere adam is closer to **a wild-donkey, a human one**, animal noun first, human noun second, the reverse of the ordinary Hebrew word order where the describing word comes after the noun it describes."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Pere, wild donkey, stands before adam, man, reversing the normal Hebrew pattern where a modifying word follows its noun; the expected order would put man first and wild donkey as the descriptor. Instead the wild donkey, an animal proverbial in the ancient Near East for fierce independence, untamed freedom, and life beyond settled territory, is named first, making it the dominant image and man almost an afterthought clarifying which kind of creature is meant."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English word order cannot easily reproduce this reversal without sounding broken; a wild-donkey man puts the animal first the way the Hebrew does but reads as odd English, so translators default to the more natural wild man, losing the emphasis the unusual Hebrew order creates."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a Hebrew phrase's word order runs backward from what the grammar normally expects, that reversal is itself doing rhetorical work, foregrounding whichever word was moved to the front. Do not read past unusual word order as a translator's stylistic accident."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Wild man keeps a natural English sentence but loses the foregrounded animal image. Wild donkey of a man, closer to the Hebrew word order, keeps the emphasis but reads awkwardly in English, the standard tradeoff between literal word order and natural target-language phrasing."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e4\u05b6\u05bc\u05e8\u05b6\u05d0 \u05d0\u05b8\u05d3\u05b8\u05dd pere adam \u00b7 H6501 + H120"}],"src":["pere as the untamed wild donkey, proverbial for wildness elsewhere: Job 39:5-8","Standard treatment of the reversed noun order in Genesis commentaries and Hebrew grammars"]}
• {"n":"adam \/ adamah","s":"Human, and the ground he was taken from. The pun is the point.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=adam-adamah","r":"Genesis 2:7","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Versions read man, Adam, mankind, or human beings; adamah is ground or land."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**Human** and **humus** are related in English, and almost nobody knows it. Now imagine the connection being obvious to every reader and used as an argument."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Adam is humanity collectively and also the personal name. Adamah is the ground. Genesis 2:7 forms the one from the other and 3:19 returns him to it, and the wordplay frames the whole account."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English man and ground share nothing, so the pun has to be footnoted every time."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Hebrew narrative argues with sound as often as with statement. When a name is explained in the text, the sound is usually doing the explaining."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Man is the majority rendering; mankind and human beings are increasingly common where the collective is in view."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d0\u05b8\u05d3\u05b8\u05dd adam \u00b7 H120"}],"src":["Genesis 2:7; 3:19, 23","adam as humanity: Genesis 1:26-27","adamah as ground: Genesis 4:10-12"]}