Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joel Stucki" <joel AT stucki.ws>]

On 6/26/06, Kim Chua <s_kim_chua AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> Can someone please give the literal translation of
> Psalm 118:6 from the Hebrew to English?
> The English is The Lord is on my side, another
> is The Lord is with me.
>
> Kim

Kim,
I agree with the excellent advice given by the other responders but
would like to point out that "is on my side" is a fine rendition of
meaning of the text, however the word for "side" does not explicitly
occur in hebrew. "Is with me" is also fine. In fact the phrase is
translated from a single two letter word in the Hebrew text which is a
compound of a prepositional prefix (lammed - most commonly "to") and a
pronomial suffix (Yodh - 1st person singular). "YHVH to me" is the
most literal rendering but of course that makes no sense and therefore
cannot be called a translation. This combination is commonly used to
respresnt the possesive "mine" and so "YHVH is mine" could be yet
another rendering.