H8669

• {"n":"Genesis 3:16b","s":"Thy desire shall be to thy husband. Three occurrences in the whole Bible, and they do not agree.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-3-16b","r":"Genesis 3:16","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Nearly all versions read desire. A minority tradition reads desire to control or contrary to, following an argument from the Genesis 4:7 parallel. The ESV moved to contrary to in 2016 and drew heavy criticism."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"A word that turns up three times in an entire library is not defined, it is guessed at. If two of those three appearances point one way and the third points another, every dictionary entry for it is an argument wearing a definition's clothes."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Teshuqah occurs at Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7 and Song of Songs 7:10. At 4:7 sin's teshuqah is toward Cain and he must rule over it, using the same two words as here, which is what drives the control reading. At Song 7:10 it is plainly longing."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English desire covers longing, appetite and craving but not a bid for mastery. Whichever sense a translator picks, the other two occurrences start pulling against it."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Three occurrences is below the floor where a lexicon can report rather than argue. When a contested doctrine rests on a word this rare, that rarity is the first thing to say out loud."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Longing fits Song of Songs and the plain sense. Contrary to or a bid to control fits the Genesis 4:7 parallel and the ruling clause that follows. The parallel is genuinely close and the sample is genuinely tiny, which is why this is filed contested rather than decided."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05ea\u05b0\u05bc\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05bc\u05e7\u05b8\u05d4 teshuqah \u00b7 H8669"}],"src":["All three occurrences: Genesis 3:16; 4:7; Song of Songs 7:10","The ESV 2016 revision to contrary to and the published responses to it","Septuagint reads apostrophe, turning or recourse, at both Genesis passages"]}
• {"n":"Genesis 4:7","s":"Sin lieth at the door. Its desire is to thee, and thou shalt rule over it. The same crouching-word, and the same two words as 3:16.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-4-7","r":"Genesis 4:7","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every English version reads lieth, croucheth, or is crouching, all correctly neutral. Almost none of the popular translations use anything that suggests an ambush or a personified threat, though one modern academic version, the New English Bible, does render it demon."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**The dog is lying by the door.** Harmless. Now imagine the word for lying also names a predator waiting in ambush at a doorway in a neighboring language and culture. Lieth sounds passive in English; the word behind it does not."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Rovets is a participle of the common verb for an animal lying down, but this personified use of sin as the subject crouching at a door closely resembles the Akkadian rabisu, a demon that lurks at thresholds to attack. Whether the Hebrew word is a deliberate echo of that image or simply the ordinary verb applied metaphorically is debated, but the doorway setting matches the Akkadian pattern closely. The same verse then reuses teshuqah, desire, and the verb mashal, rule over, the identical pairing used of the woman and the man at Genesis 3:16, this time offered to Cain as a warning rather than a sentence."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English lieth or crouches names a posture; it carries none of the threshold-demon association some scholars hear behind the Hebrew word, and English has no way to signal that the sentence structure repeats 3:16's marriage language word for word, since a reader would need to notice both verses share teshuqah and mashal in Hebrew to catch it at all."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A common word placed in an unusual setting, here an animal-word applied to sin at a doorway, can carry connotations from the culture's wider vocabulary that a plain gloss will not show. And when a rare phrase repeats verbatim a few verses apart, as teshuqah plus mashal does here, treat the second occurrence as commentary on the first."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Lieth or crouches is the safe, literal rendering every version uses. Whether to import the Akkadian demon imagery is a judgment call resting on comparative Semitic philology rather than the Hebrew word by itself, which is exactly why mainstream translations have stayed with the neutral gloss."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e8\u05b9\u05d1\u05b5\u05e5 rovets (\u05e8\u05b8\u05d1\u05b7\u05e5 ravats) \u00b7 H7257 \/ \u05ea\u05b0\u05bc\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05bc\u05e7\u05b8\u05d4 teshuqah, \u05de\u05b8\u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05dc mashal \u00b7 H8669, H4910"}],"src":["Akkadian rabisu as a threshold demon: standard Assyriology reference works on Mesopotamian demonology","The same teshuqah-mashal pairing at Genesis 3:16","E. A. Speiser's Anchor Bible commentary discusses the demonic-crouching reading"]}