H1777

• {"n":"Genesis 6:3","s":"My spirit shall not always strive with man. A verb used only this once, and nobody is fully certain what it says God's spirit will stop doing.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-6-3","r":"Genesis 6:3","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most versions read strive or contend, following one proposed derivation. A minority tradition reads abide or remain, following a different proposed derivation, giving a noticeably different picture of what is ending."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a verb that shows up exactly once in every book you own. You would have exactly one sentence to reconstruct its meaning from, and reasonable readers could disagree. That is the situation with the verb translated strive here."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Yadon shows up nowhere else in the Hebrew Old Testament outside this one verse. One proposal derives it from din, to judge or contend, giving strive or contend, God arguing with or opposing humanity's corruption. A second proposal derives it from a root meaning to remain or abide, giving my spirit will not remain in man forever, a statement about withdrawal of presence rather than a legal contest. Both derivations require reasoning from other roots rather than from other occurrences of this exact form."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English strive and English abide describe different relationships, contest versus presence, and a translator must choose one before an English reader ever sees the sentence. With only one occurrence to work from, Hebrew itself does not settle which picture is correct, and English cannot show that uncertainty within the text."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A word attested exactly once anywhere in a corpus is being reconstructed from etymology and context, not read off a body of established usage. Hold single-occurrence definitions more loosely than a lexicon's confident gloss might suggest."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Strive or contend fits a chapter about escalating human violence and portrays God as long-suffering rather than instantly punitive. Abide or remain fits a chapter about the Spirit's presence being withdrawn from corrupted humanity, closer to an exhaustion of patience than an argument. Both readings are defended by serious grammarians working from the same single data point."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d9\u05b8\u05d3\u05d5\u05b9\u05df yadon (roots proposed: \u05d3\u05d9\u05df din, judge, or \u05d3\u05bc\u05d5\u05bc\u05df dun, remain) \u00b7 H1777"}],"src":["Only occurrence: Genesis 6:3","din, to judge\/contend, as one proposed root: standard lexicons","An alternative root related to abiding\/remaining, argued by other grammarians, given the word's singular attestation"]}