H4532

• {"n":"Psalm 95:8","s":"As at Meribah, and as in the day of Massah. Both place names and, simultaneously, the ordinary words for strife and testing.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-95-8","r":"Psalm 95:8","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads Meribah and Massah as bare transliterated place names, correctly identifying the location from Exodus 17, but without conveying that both names are, simultaneously, the ordinary Hebrew words for the very behavior being condemned."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a warning that says **don't act like you did at Grudge City**, where Grudge City is both a real, mappable town and, transparently, a description of what happened there. Meribah, strife, and Massah, testing, work exactly that way, and English place names like Meribah carry none of that built-in description."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Meribah, from the root riv, to strive or contend, and Massah, from nasah, to test, both name the specific location at Exodus 17:7 where Israel quarreled with Moses and tested the LORD over water, and both function as plain common nouns describing exactly that behavior. The Septuagint and Targum translations sometimes render them as common nouns, strife and testing, rather than transliterated place names, making the double function explicit in a way the Hebrew leaves the reader to notice on their own."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English Meribah and Massah are bare geographic labels with no built-in meaning, so the warning's rhetorical force, do not repeat the very thing this place is named for, is completely inaccessible unless a reader is told what the two names actually mean."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a warning or exhortation invokes a place name from Israel's history, check whether the name itself is also a common noun describing the event that happened there. Hebrew place names frequently double as built-in commentary the way Meribah and Massah do here."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Meribah and Massah, transliterated as bare place names, is the standard and necessary translation, since English has no way to render a word as both proper noun and common noun simultaneously. What matters is recovering the double meaning that the bare transliteration necessarily discards."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05de\u05b0\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05d1\u05b8\u05d4 Meribah (\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05d1 riv, strive) \/ \u05de\u05b7\u05e1\u05b8\u05bc\u05d4 Massah (\u05e0\u05b8\u05e1\u05b8\u05d4 nasah, test) \u00b7 H4809 \/ H4532"}],"src":["The original naming: Exodus 17:7","Hebrews 3:7-19 and 4:3-7 quoting this psalm at length","Septuagint and Targum rendering the names as common nouns in places"]}