H2490

• {"n":"Genesis 4:26","s":"Then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. Or: then it became common, in a profaning sense, to call on that name.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-4-26","r":"Genesis 4:26","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Nearly every English version reads began, a positive account of the first public worship of God. This is the majority reading and the one nearly all translations print."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English **began** and English **profaned** share no letters and no sound; nobody would confuse them. The Hebrew word behind began shares its root with the word for profane, and which one this verse means is a live question, not a translator's typo."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Huchal is a hophal form that most naturally derives from chalal I, to begin, giving began to call. But chalal is also the root behind chalal III, to profane or defile, and at least one ancient Jewish reading, reflected in Rashi's comment, takes the verse in the profaning sense: it became common, in a degraded way, to invoke the LORD's name, fitting the chapter's downward arc from Cain through Lamech."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English has entirely separate words for began and profaned, so a translation must commit to one root or the other. Hebrew's two roots converge in this one conjugated form, huchal, so the ambiguity that troubles Hebrew readers is invisible the moment an English verb is chosen."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A Hebrew word that could derive from more than one root with unrelated meanings needs its immediate context checked, and the larger unit it sits in, not just the dictionary entry with the highest frequency. A chapter's overall trajectory, here Cain's line sliding toward Lamech's violence, can be genuine evidence for which root fits."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Began to call is the reading nearly every translation prints, treating the verse as a bright note of true worship starting early in human history. The profaning reading, held by Rashi and a minority of modern scholars, fits the chapter's decline from Cain to Lamech but requires choosing the rarer sense of a shared root against the grain of most translation tradition."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d4\u05d5\u05bc\u05d7\u05b7\u05dc huchal (\u05d7\u05b8\u05dc\u05b7\u05dc chalal I, begin \/ III, profane) \u00b7 H2490"}],"src":["Rashi's commentary on Genesis 4:26, reading huchal in the profaning sense","chalal I (begin) and chalal III (profane) as distinct homographic roots: standard Hebrew lexicons","John Sailhamer's commentary on Genesis reading the verse as part of the broader decline in humanity traced across Genesis 4"]}