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  • From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Standard translations appear oddly inaccurate - Help needed please?
  • Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:08:49 -0800

Chris:

I see the second as a parallel to LRQ YG(TY. I have complete (used up)
my strength is a parallel to the tiring from hard work that is YG(,
and he has done it for lifelessness and futility just as in the first
section it was for emptiness.

I don't have the KJV nor NIV before me, but from the short snippets
you quote, it appears that they don't follow the Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

On 11/17/06, Chris and Nel <wattswestmaas AT eircom.net> wrote:
Dear Members,

ISAIAH 49:4

".....I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in
vain..... (KJV)

'.....I have laboured to no purpose I have spent my strength in vain and for
nothing....(NIV)

Leaving the variety of shades of meaning of the various words aside, My
objection is specifically with the positioning of the word "strength" in the
English translations.

The hebrew words: 'LeToHu VeHeVel' -- there is a merekhah under the TaV and
a tifha under the HeH of the following word, As I understand it the merekhah
binds the following word which carries a tifha and this tifha is
disjunctive. Furthermore the next word: 'CoCHi' carries a munah to bind it
with the next word.

Yet moreso is this: As I read the hebrew I am dividing the sentence quite
poetically and naturally in this manner:

----VeANi AMaRTi ---LeRiK YaGaRTi----LeToHu VHeVeL----CoCHi CiLeTi----

To Summarise, WHY then can we not translate: 'LeToHu VeHeVel' as a seperate
clause such as being an interpolation by the author in a moment of breathing
out, sighing out some extra clarifying personal feelings, like a pause after
the preceding verb, just as if one was to say in English:

"...I have laboured exhaustively...(and for what)?... (He sighs)but for
emptiness and futile things, (aah) my strength is all but ended"

and then translate up to the atnah as: My strength is at an end, or my
strength is consumed" or whatever? I do not see that "MY STRENGTH: has
anything to do with the preceding two hebrew words. The author is
summarising everything just gone before by saying that my strength is at an
end. I see no justification for binding 'My Strngth' to 'LeToHu VHeVeL'

Your comments would really be appreciated, I am sharing with you my personal
difficulty at trying to understand why the orthodox translations have done
what appears to me to be slightly innaccurate.

Best Regards
Chris Watts
Ireland.




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