Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 5:1 | Call now, if there is answering thee; and to whom from the holy ones wilt thou turn? |
| 5:2 | For to the foolish, and anger will slay, and the simple will jealousy kill. |
| 5:3 | I saw the foolish one taking root, and suddenly I shall curse his habitation. |
| 5:4 | His sons shall be far from salvation, and they shall be crushed in the gate, and none delivering. |
| 5:5 | Which his harvest the hungry one will devour, and not from thorns shall they take it, and destruction gaped after their substance. |
| 5:6 | For toil will not come forth from the dust, and labor will not spring up from the earth; |
| 5:7 | For man shall be born to labor as the sons of the flame will lift up to fly. |
| 5:8 | But I will seek to God, and to God set my cause: |
| 5:9 | He did great things, and no searching;. and wonders even no number: |
| 5:10 | He gave rain upon the face of the earth, and sent waters upon the out places: |
| 5:11 | To raise up the humbled to height; and those mourning were exalted to salvation. |
| 5:12 | Bringing to nought the purposes of the crafty, and their hand shall not do an undertaking. |
| 5:13 | He took the wise in their craftiness, and the counsel of the perverse was headlong. |
| 5:14 | The days they will meet darkness, and they will grope in the noon day as night |
| 5:15 | And he saved the needy from the sword, from their mouth and from the band of the strong one. |
| 5:16 | And hope will be to the poor one, and iniquity contracted her mouth. |
| 5:17 | Behold, happy the man God shall rebuke him: and thou shalt not reject the correction of the Almighty: |
| 5:18 | For he will cause pain, and he will bind up: he will smite and his hands will heal. |
| 5:19 | In six straits he will deliver thee, and in seven, evil shall not touch upon thee. |
| 5:20 | In famine he redeemed thee from death, and in war from the hands of the sword. |
| 5:21 | In the scourge of the tongue thou shalt be hid, and thou shalt not be afraid of desolation when it shall come. |
| 5:22 | At desolation and at hunger thou shalt laugh, and from the beasts of the earth thou shalt not fear. |
| 5:23 | For with the stones of the field they covenant, and the beast of the field was at peace with thee. |
| 5:24 | And thou knewest that thy tent is peace, and thou reviewedst thy dwelling, and thou shalt not sin. |
| 5:25 | And thou knewest the multitude of thy seed, and thine offspring as the grass of the earth. |
| 5:26 | Thou shalt come in old age to thy grave, as the ascending of a heap of sheaves in its time. |
| 5:27 | Behold this, we searched it out, so it is: hear it, and know thou for thyself. |
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
The Julia Evelina Smith Parker Translation is considered the first complete translation of the Bible into English by a woman. The Bible was titled The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues, and was published in 1876.
Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Connecticut had a working knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Her father had been a Congregationalist minister before he became a lawyer. Having read the Bible in its original languages, she set about creating her own translation, which she completed in 1855, after a number of drafts. The work is a strictly literal rendering, always translating a Greek or Hebrew word with the same word wherever possible. Smith accomplished this work on her own in the span of eight years (1847 to 1855). She had sought out no help in the venture, even writing, "I do not see that anybody can know more about it than I do." Smith's insistence on complete literalness, plus an effort to translate each original word with the same English word, combined with an odd notion of Hebrew tenses (often translating the Hebrew imperfect tense with the English future) results in a translation that is mechanical and often nonsensical. However, such a translation if overly literal might be valuable to consult in checking the meaning of some individual verse. One notable feature of this translation was the prominent use of the Divine Name, Jehovah, throughout the Old Testament of this Bible version.
In 1876, at 84 years of age some 21 years after completing her work, she finally sought publication. The publication costs ($4,000) were personally funded by Julia and her sister Abby Smith. The 1,000 copies printed were offered for $2.50 each, but her household auction in 1884 sold about 50 remaining copies.
The translation fell into obscurity as it was for the most part too literal and lacked any flow. For example, Jer. 22:23 was given as follows: "Thou dwelling in Lebanon, building as nest in the cedars, how being compassionated in pangs coming to thee the pain as in her bringing forth." However, the translation was the only Contemporary English translation out of the original languages available to English readers until the publication of The British Revised Version in 1881-1894.(The New testament was published in 1881, the Old in 1884, and the Apocrypha in 1894.) This makes it an invaluable Bible for its period.