H1980

• {"n":"Genesis 5:24","s":"Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. The refrain breaks, and the verb for walked is unusual.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-5-24","r":"Genesis 5:24","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads walked with God and God took him, correctly, but the contrast with the surrounding refrain, and he died, and he died, and he died, is a formatting effect a printed English Bible does not reproduce the way a continuous Hebrew reading does."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a list where every entry ends **and then he died**, except one, which instead says **and then he was gone**. The break itself is the announcement, before you even read what filled the gap. Hebrew builds that exact surprise into this one verse."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Vayithhalech, walked, is a hitpael, a reflexive or intensive stem, used of Enoch here and later of Noah at 6:9, rare enough as a description of a human relationship with God that its two uses in Genesis are usually read together. Where the chapter's refrain would put vayamot, and he died, this entry instead has einenu, he was not, and God took him, laqach, the same verb used of Elijah's departure centuries later."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English walked with God reads as an ordinary idiom for a godly life; it does not carry the reflexive intensity of the Hebrew stem, nor does it signal, without a reader already knowing the pattern, that this is the one entry in ten where the expected refrain is deliberately withheld."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"In a formulaic passage, the exception is where the meaning concentrates. Before treating a broken pattern as incidental, ask what the formula was doing everywhere else and read the break as the chapter's real point."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Translators aren't divided on the plain sense here. What is lost is structural: seeing this entry against the refrain it breaks, and noticing that the same rare verb form recurs for Noah two chapters later, both of which require reading the Hebrew continuously rather than verse by isolated verse."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05bc\u05ea\u05b0\u05d4\u05b7\u05dc\u05b5\u05bc\u05da\u05b0 vayithhalech (\u05d4\u05b8\u05dc\u05b7\u05da\u05b0 halach, hitpael) \u00b7 H1980"}],"src":["The same hitpael form of halach used of Noah: Genesis 6:9","laqach used of a prophet's departure: 2 Kings 2:3, 5, 9-10, of Elijah","Hebrews 11:5 reads this verse as Enoch not seeing death, using the Septuagint's metatithemi"]}
• {"n":"Genesis 12:1","s":"Get thee out. Literally go, for yourself, or go, to yourself: a pronoun added where none was grammatically needed.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-12-1","r":"Genesis 12:1","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most versions read get thee out, go forth, or simply go, all reasonable renderings that lose the grammatical oddity, an unneeded reflexive pronoun, that Hebrew readers immediately notice."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**Go.** That is a complete command. **Go, for yourself.** That is the same command with something added that changes nothing about the instruction and everything about its weight, making the journey personal rather than merely logistical. Hebrew does exactly that here."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Lech lecha pairs the plain imperative lech, go, with lecha, to or for yourself, a dative pronoun that is not required to complete the sentence's grammar. Its presence signals personal investment or benefit, go for your own sake, into your own becoming, rather than a bare travel instruction, and the same construction recurs at Genesis 22:2 when Abraham is told to go to Moriah, framing his story with two commands that are more than they need to be."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English go is already grammatically complete, so an English translator either drops the redundant pronoun entirely, matching ordinary usage, or must add an interpretive phrase like for your own sake to signal what the Hebrew conveys by the pronoun's mere unnecessary presence."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Watch for grammatically superfluous words in a Hebrew imperative; a pronoun that is not required to complete the sentence is often doing emphatic or reflexive work that a bare English imperative cannot carry without extra vocabulary."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Get thee out and go forth both lose the pronoun's redundancy but keep the sense of departure. No translation captures the personal-stakes nuance of lecha without either paraphrasing or adding a phrase the Hebrew itself achieves with one small, technically unnecessary word."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05dc\u05b6\u05da\u05b0\u05be\u05dc\u05b0\u05da\u05b8 lech lecha (\u05d4\u05b8\u05dc\u05b7\u05da\u05b0 halach, to go) \u00b7 H1980"}],"src":["The identical construction recurs at Genesis 22:2, sending Abraham to Moriah","Standard treatment of the dative of interest\/ethical dative in Biblical Hebrew grammar"]}