Biblical Hebrew Forum

["A Becker" <ABecker AT nerdshack.com>]

Hello all.

 

I have been reading through the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “New World Translation”
for something I am researching. At Daniel 11:5, their version reads:

 

“And the king of the south will become strong, even [one] of his princes;
and he will prevail against him and will certainly rule with extensive
dominion [greater than] that one’s ruling power.”

 

I translate the same passage as follows:

 

“Then the king of the south shall be strong, yet one of his princes shall
prevail over him and shall rule a dominion greater than his dominion.”

 

Excluding the different understanding of Weqatals here (NWT: [he] will
certainly rule; Weqatal=certitude of action [a]) and the verboseness on the
part of the NWT,  the main difference between the two renderings is that
mine omits the waw before “he shall prevail” (YXZQ) with the Old Greek and
Theodotion and I accept the admittedly conjectural emendation of MM$LTW to
MMM$LTW offered by BHS. It should be noted that in this last difference, the
NWT agrees with the sense of the emendation, but does not actually emend the
text (thus the use of brackets [b]). I find the rendering “And the king of
the south will become strong, even [one] of his princes” strange, but I
can’t put my finger on why. Since the NWT accepts the waw for YXZQ, it is
forced to connect WMN &RYW with the preceding clause. The NWT is not the
only translation that accepts MT on this. The NET Bible, for example, has
“Then the king of the south and one of his subordinates will grow strong.”
This reads much smoother to me than the NWT. Is there anyone out there who
can help me articulate what I am feeling?

 

Anthony

 

Notes:

 

a. “[W]ithout following any arbitrary or artificial "waw conversive"
‎theory…we can translate a perfect verb into past, ‎present or future time
and yet show its emphatic nature and its being completed or its being a dead
certainty, as if it ‎were already accomplished when foretold or promised. We
have strictly followed this principle, well knowing that it ‎would lead to a
result in our translation different from that of others who, to their own
confusion, have followed the ‎‎"waw conversive" theory of tenth-century
Hebrew grammarians.” –Forward, New World Translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures, vol. 1, 1953

 

b. “BRACKETS: Single brackets [ ] enclose words inserted to complete the
sense in the English text.” –Introduction, New World Translation with
References, p. 7