Tim has a great post where he is being the Tim we all love. He shares his thoughts from his reading of the ESV Old Testament, and shows in detail the weakness of some of the other translations. He concludes:
“As I indicated earlier, I was grateful this morning that I have access to such a solid translation of Scripture. While I do not know Hebrew, I still have access to an accurate translation of the author’s original words, complete with the phrases, words and metaphors that set one author apart from another. I have access to the full meaning, or as close as I can come without access to the original language, of what was written so long ago. I simply can’t understand how anyone would be satisfied with anything less.”
The comments box includes a question about what readers of the Hebrew would really have understood by the idiom which the ESV includes. The fact that we can even have that conversation and discussion based on an English Bible makes Tim’s point forcefully for him. The beauty of the ESV is it leaves certain points slightly ambiguous. Did the Hebrew readers take the words “rested with his fathers” as meaning a literal rest or simply as death? We can ask the question, we can explore how the rest of the scriptures interpret it, and most of all we can know that the actual words have been as accurately as possible included in this english translation.
Making us do a bit of work and ask a few questions is no bad thing in a bible in my humble opinion. Great post Tim!
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