H5387

• {"n":"Genesis 23:6","s":"A mighty prince among us. Literally, a prince of God, using elohim as a superlative.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-23-6","r":"Genesis 23:6","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads mighty prince or great chieftain, correctly conveying the superlative sense without the literal words prince of God ever appearing in translation."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English intensifies with words like **super** or **mega**, or with an adverb, **incredibly great**. Hebrew has another option: attach the word for God to a noun to mean very or utterly. Elohim here is not claiming Abraham is divine; it is doing the job English mega does."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Nesi elohim, literally prince of God, uses elohim the way Hebrew occasionally uses divine vocabulary to intensify an ordinary noun or adjective to its greatest possible degree, a pattern also seen in phrases like an exceedingly great city, literally a city great to God, at Jonah 3:3. The construction is a superlative device, not a theological claim about Abraham's status."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English has no equivalent habit of using God's name as a grammatical intensifier, so a literal translation, prince of God, would mislead an English reader into hearing a theological claim the Hebrew idiom was never making."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When elohim or a divine name appears attached to an ordinary noun in a way that does not fit a normal statement about deity, check whether Hebrew is using it as a superlative intensifier rather than making a religious claim. The construction is rare but attested and easy to over-read."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Translators are not divided here; mighty prince correctly captures the sense and rightly avoids the misleading literal rendering. Worth noting is a genuine grammatical curiosity: Hebrew can reach for God's own name simply to say very, in a way English idiom has no parallel for."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e0\u05b0\u05e9\u05b4\u05c2\u05d9\u05d0 \u05d0\u05b1\u05dc\u05b9\u05d4\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd nesi elohim \u00b7 H5387 + H430"}],"src":["The same superlative pattern at Jonah 3:3, 'an exceedingly great city,' literally 'great to God'","D. Winton Thomas, 'A Consideration of Some Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew,' Vetus Testamentum 3 (1953), on this construction as a Hebrew superlative device"]}