H6757

• {"n":"Psalm 23:4","s":"The valley of the shadow of death. Possibly not shadow plus death at all, but one word meaning deepest darkness.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-23-4","r":"Psalm 23:4","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads shadow of death or, in some more recent translations, deep darkness or deepest darkness, reflecting this exact disagreement about the word's actual construction."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English shadow of death is a vivid compound, two ideas fused into one image. Some scholars argue the underlying Hebrew was never really shadow plus death at all, but a single intensive word built the way English forms darkness from dark, later reread by tradition as though it contained the separate word for death."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Tsalmavet looks like a compound of tsel, shadow, and mavet, death, but some scholars argue it derives instead from a root meaning simply intense darkness, with the ending later re-pointed by the Masoretic vocalizers to resemble mavet, death, once that reading had become traditional. An Akkadian cognate meaning darkness supports the intensive-darkness reading, while the traditional compound reading, shadow of death, has by far the longer devotional history and remains linguistically defensible either way."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English shadow of death carries centuries of funeral and mortality associations built on the compound reading; deep darkness or deepest darkness conveys a more general, if still ominous, sense of danger and gloom without necessarily invoking death specifically, a real difference in what the verse is picturing."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a compound-looking Hebrew word could also be analyzed as a single intensive form, check whether the compound reading might be a later, traditional reinterpretation of an originally simpler word. Both readings can be linguistically defensible at once, as they are here."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Shadow of death keeps the traditional, deeply loved reading and its long devotional history, the one nearly every reader already carries. Deepest darkness follows the intensive-noun analysis and a plausible Akkadian cognate, and either way the psalm is naming the darkest, most dangerous place a shepherd would need to walk a flock through."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e6\u05b7\u05dc\u05b0\u05de\u05b8\u05d5\u05b6\u05ea tsalmavet (\u05e6\u05b5\u05dc tsel, shadow + \u05de\u05b8\u05d5\u05b6\u05ea mavet, death, or one intensive noun) \u00b7 H6757"}],"src":["Proposed Akkadian cognate for darkness supporting the intensive-noun reading","The traditional compound analysis, shadow + death, reflected in the Masoretic vocalization","Modern versions' split between 'shadow of death' and 'deep darkness'"]}