H4217

• {"n":"Psalm 103:12","s":"As far as the east is from the west. A deliberately chosen pair of directions with no meeting point, unlike north and south.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-103-12","r":"Psalm 103:12","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads east and west, accurately translating the specific pair of directions the Hebrew names, though without necessarily prompting a reader to notice why this particular pair, rather than north and south, was chosen."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Travel far enough north and you reach a point where north stops meaning anything, the pole; the same happens going south. Travel east, though, and you are still traveling east forever; there is no eastern pole where the direction runs out. The psalm's choice of east and west, not north and south, pictures a separation with literally no endpoint."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Mizrach, east, and ma'arav, west, name directions that never converge anywhere on the earth's surface, unlike north and south, which meet at the poles. The poetic choice is precise: describing the removal of sin as far as the east is from the west pictures a genuinely infinite, ever-increasing distance, not simply a very large but ultimately bounded one, the way north and south, converging at fixed points, would have implied."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English readers hear east and west as simply one reasonable pair of opposite directions among several, north and south being equally obvious alternatives, with no built-in signal that the poet specifically avoided the pair that has actual meeting points on a globe."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When Hebrew poetry chooses one pair of opposites over an equally available alternative, ask whether the specific pair chosen carries a meaning the alternative would not. Here, the choice of east\/west over north\/south is doing real conceptual work: describing infinite rather than merely large distance."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"East and west as the rendering is not in dispute. What is worth making explicit is the deliberate reasoning behind the choice, a pairing of directions with no geometric meeting point, that most readers absorb as simply poetic without registering as a precise, considered image."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05de\u05b4\u05d6\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d7 \u05d5\u05bc\u05de\u05b7\u05e2\u05b2\u05e8\u05b8\u05d1 mizrach u-ma'arav \u00b7 H4217 + H4628"}],"src":["North and south converging at the poles, a basic geographic fact underlying the poetic choice","Standard commentary observation on this verse's specific choice of directions"]}