H6093

• {"n":"Genesis 3:16a","s":"Sorrow in childbearing, toil in the field. One Hebrew word, two English words.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-3-16a","r":"Genesis 3:16","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"The King James reads sorrow in verse 16 and sorrow in verse 17, keeping the link. Several modern versions read pain for the woman and toil or painful labour for the man, breaking it."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"If a story gave two characters the same punishment word and your translation rendered it **sorrow** for one and **toil** for the other, you would read two different sentences. The writer wrote one."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Itsabon occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible: twice here, at verses 16 and 17, and once at Genesis 5:29. The word is about painful labour in the sense of hard work, not specifically physical pain. Both sentences are about work becoming hard."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"No one English word covers both the pain of childbirth and the grind of farming. Any rendering has to pick a shade, and the parallel dissolves."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When two verses in the same passage sound like different subjects, check whether they share a word. Passages are often built on repetition that translation smooths away."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Pain reads naturally for childbirth and badly for agriculture. Toil reads naturally for agriculture and coldly for childbirth. The King James kept one word for both and is more faithful to the structure than most modern versions here."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e2\u05b4\u05e6\u05b8\u05bc\u05d1\u05d5\u05b9\u05df itsabon \u00b7 H6093"}],"src":["All three occurrences: Genesis 3:16; 3:17; 5:29","The related verb atsav, to hurt or grieve: Genesis 6:6; 1 Chronicles 4:10"]}