H1249

• {"n":"Psalm 2:12","s":"Kiss the Son. Or: kiss purely, do homage in purity. The word bar is Aramaic for son, but also Hebrew for grain, clean, or pure.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-2-12","r":"Psalm 2:12","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"The King James reads kiss the Son, capitalizing it as a messianic title. Some Jewish translations and a number of scholarly treatments read kiss purely, or do homage in purity, treating bar as the Hebrew word for pure or clean rather than as an Aramaic loanword."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a poem written in English that suddenly drops in a French word for exactly one line, close enough in spelling to an ordinary English word that readers argue for centuries about which one was meant. That is the situation with bar here: an Aramaic loanword for son, or a Hebrew word for purity, spelled almost the same way."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Bar, in Aramaic, is the ordinary word for son, used throughout Aramaic portions of Daniel and Ezra; the same consonants in Hebrew mean grain, or, adjectivally, pure or clean. The rest of the psalm, including verse 7's begotten language, uses the ordinary Hebrew ben for son, making bar's sudden appearance here either a deliberate, striking Aramaism, possibly chosen for its impact on Gentile kings who would have understood Aramaic, or simply the ordinary Hebrew word for purity, unrelated to sonship at all."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English Son capitalizes and commits to the Aramaic-loanword reading; English purity commits to the alternative Hebrew reading entirely. A translator must choose one, permanently closing off the other possibility that the bare Hebrew consonants themselves leave genuinely open."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a single word could belong to two different languages sharing a script, check whether the surrounding text is otherwise consistent in its language choices. An isolated switch, as bar would be here, is unusual enough to weigh both directions seriously rather than defaulting to whichever reading a translation tradition has already settled on."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Kiss the Son fits the psalm's messianic trajectory and its influential place in later messianic reading, but requires accepting an isolated Aramaic loanword in an otherwise Hebrew composition. Kiss purely or do homage in purity keeps the whole psalm in consistent Hebrew vocabulary but loses the direct filial title some later interpreters, and much later devotional tradition, have built upon this verse."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e0\u05b7\u05e9\u05b0\u05bc\u05c1\u05e7\u05d5\u05bc\u05be\u05d1\u05b7\u05e8 nashequ bar (\u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05e8 bar, Aramaic 'son' \/ Hebrew 'pure') \u00b7 H1247 \/ H1249"}],"src":["bar as the ordinary Aramaic word for son: Daniel 3:25; Ezra 5:1-2","The rest of Psalm 2 using Hebrew ben for son, e.g. verse 7","Jewish tradition and the Targum both favor the 'purity' reading, while the Septuagint and the Christian tradition that follows it favor 'son'"]}