You asked about translations and word studies Mir. I came in late and just wrote a few lines. I get up at 4 for work and I was beginning to cave in. Sorry.

To answer your question, I have found, as have many that are far more literate in the original text languages than I, that there are some complicated issues with translation and culture. Some of the older translation, though in most ways magnificent scholarship, beautiful and creative in language and sound theologically, tend to minimize women’s roll in scripture. It is understandable due to the time period and culture of the translators. I don’t pretend to be an expert nor do I seek in any way to damage Biblical faith and calling. I will, though, tell a bit of my journey in this area.

I was given a challenge by my Hebrew professor, a brilliant man I had learned to respect and trust. He gave me an assignment to put all my translations away, pull out only my concordance, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament and Hebrew Lexicon and translate proverbs 31. He told me to begin with an extensive word study of “Virtuous” chayil.

(By the way: all of these can be found now on the web. Some good ones are Blueletterbible.org and Bibles.net)

Needless to say, I was rather aghast at the idea. Me translate? No way! You don’t, though tell a professor “no”, so I tackeled it, assured that I would find it to be the same as I knew this proverb to be. We all knew about the virtuous wife, Right?

After a week of pouring over my meager tools and then attacking a theological library at a local Christian College I realized why my professor had steered me in this direction. Of the 243 times this word is used, it is only translated Virtue in Proverb 12, 31 and Ruth. I was staggered to find that the author had another idea entirely, and it had nothing to do with her moral purity.

My final understanding of the chapter was that King Lempel’s mom was not speaking to him on the bases level of morality and sexual purity concerning the King’s search for the nations Queen (though that was expected and assumed, as virtue and purity are attributes of wisdom and self control, not that the men of that era always exercised it). Lemul’s mother was asking him to look up and out as leader of a nation, and seek a strong, wise, skillful, mighty, even wealthy partner, a woman of valor who would bring prosperous commerce to the land. Look for one who will stand in the gate (where judges stood) as an advocate and plead the case of them who have no voice; are without recourse. Look for one who will bring justice to the people.

I was wavering as I sent off my new and bold translation, but when he read it he sent me to the JB Phillips translation (Also can be found on Bibles.net now- Kool huh?).

I found Philips had drawn some of the same conclusions. I found that Ruth was called a woman of strength, wisdom, even intelligent woman, and everyone knew it. It would be laughable to call David’s MIGHTY men, David’s VIRTUOUS men (and from whence we come a bit ironic), but that is the same word.

In the COG, as well as many denominations, Proverbs 31 was a formula for the “good wife” of self-sacrificial, even self-destructive day and night service to her husband and family, and in the COG everyone else, especially Royals. If she starved, froze and dropped dead that was ok, she is expendable, as long as her family was warm well fed and had lovely red cloths to wear in the snow. The absurdity of that prevailing attitude was and is overwhelming.

To be honest this was the beginning of an exhausting search. I looked at the Hebrew bases for several of the Isaiah, Psalms and Proverbs and found the King James translators to be right on the money. Halleluiah! That was comforting. I din’t have to throw out the whole Bible. Just kidding. KJ is fabulous on almost everything. But not that one. It made sense, in that King James lived in a strongly patriarchal era in which few women had ownership rights, education or much of a voice in anything. I doubt the translators really wanted to let that cat, so to speak, out of the bag.

Another interesting word study is RIB as in Adam’s RIB.

There are many sites with comparative translations, word studies, cultural and grammatical. Blue Letter has a “C” box on the left of each verse that goes to the Strong’s Concordance. It has Martin Luther’s writings on Grace. Very interesting!!!

Bibles.net has the writing of the early fathers and many others. Ones you may like and others you may not. Enjoy. The are the history of the church, the Body of Christ, Good and Bad. It will even read the whole Bible to you.

By the way, does any one know who Katherine Von Bora was?