H3887

• {"n":"Genesis 42:23","s":"He spake unto them by an interpreter. The same root, melitz, later names a mediator or advocate in Job.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-42-23","r":"Genesis 42:23","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads interpreter here, correctly, with no reason for an English reader to connect the word to anything beyond ordinary translation between Hebrew and Egyptian speakers."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English keeps **interpreter** and **advocate** as unrelated professions, one translates languages, the other argues a case. Hebrew melitz can name either role, an intermediary standing between two parties who cannot otherwise communicate, whether the gap is language or guilt."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Melitz names the professional interpreter mediating between Joseph, speaking Egyptian, and his brothers, speaking Hebrew, unaware Joseph understands them. The same root reappears at Job 33:23, where a heavenly melitz, one of a thousand, pleads a sufferer's case and finds a ransom for him, a figurative use scholars regularly read as intercessor or advocate, and again at Isaiah 43:27, of a divinely commissioned spokesman."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"Hebrew melitz spans both a language-translator and a legal-or-spiritual advocate; no single English word does, so the incidental detail in Joseph's story and the loaded theological image in Job read as completely unconnected once each gets its own natural English word."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A word doing mundane, logistical work in one passage can be the same root doing theological heavy lifting elsewhere. Track a root's range across the whole Hebrew Bible before assuming its use in a narrative aside is unrelated to its use in a more weighted passage."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Interpreter is the right sense here, and no version renders it otherwise. Worth flagging is the shared root with Job's mediator figure, a connection of vocabulary, not necessarily of theological intent, that Genesis 42:23 on its own gives no indication of anticipating."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05de\u05b5\u05dc\u05b4\u05d9\u05e5 melitz (\u05dc\u05d5\u05bc\u05e5 luts) \u00b7 H3887"}],"src":["The mediator\/advocate sense: Job 33:23; 16:20","A divinely commissioned spokesman: Isaiah 43:27"]}