Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi all,
recently I said:

ויאמר אלהים יהי אור Traditionally we translate this as 'And God said "Let
there be light"'. The 'let there be light' idiom we owe to William Tyndale
who coined the phrase structure 'let there be...'. Personally, I don't think
this is particularly good English (at least not in our modern world). I see
this as a direct command 'Make light!'. The Greek of the LXX agrees with the
thought of a direct command using the verb 'to make' but uses the passive
version 'καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός γενηθήτω φῶς'. In English, we get the awkward
translation of 'light be made' which can be made more palatable by a return
to the 'let...' structure 'let light be made'.

Just now I checked the Tyndale and Wycliffe translations online using
the crosswire parallel reader at
http://www.crosswire.org/study/parallelstudy.jsp?key=genesis I was
pleasantly surprised to see that Wycliffe offered a similar
translation view:

Wycliffe: And God seide, Liyt be maad, and liyt was maad.

Tyndale: Than God sayd: let there be lyghte and there was lyghte.

I don't honestly see objections on the basis of the use of the verb
'make' as particularly valid. This may well have been a part of the
semantic field of the verb HYH. Whoever translated the LXX certainly
seemed to think it was or that an idiomatic translation commanded such
an understanding. The Latin Vulgate rendition 'dixitque Deus fiat lux
et facta est lux' also seems to support such a view with its use of
'fiat'.

James Christian