Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi,

2009/9/24 Steve Miller <smille10 AT sbcglobal.net>

> Most people think that "yehi or vayehi or" means that God spoke light into
> existence in that verse. I don't think it has to mean that.
>
> The phrase "haya <noun>" without a predicate seems to be rare.
>
> An example is the 6 repetitions in Gen 1 of the phrase "vayehi erev vayehi
> bokar", "and it became evening, and it became morning". It doesn't mean
> that
> evening and morning never existed before and came into existence 6 times.
>
> "Light be made" is about as good a translation of Gen 1:3 as "and evening
> was made, and morning was made" is of 1:5b, 8b, and so forth for each of
> the
> 6 days.
>
>
I think it is impossible to choose one single word to translate HYH that
sits well with the English idiom in every single case. Each case must be
analysed in its own right. The sense of HYH in ויהי ערב ויהי בקר is quite
clearly that of 'coming to pass' i.e. 'and evening came to pass and morning
came to pass'.

There are quite clearly several levels of translation ranging from the more
literal to the more idiomatic. We could agree on a core meaning of HYH to be
that of 'become' and then select a literal translation of 'and evening
became and morning became'. Then we could soften it as you have done above
and render 'and it became evening and it became morning'. Then we could ask
ourselves 'Do people really talk like that in English?' i.e. 'Does this
translation really reflect the English idiom?'. Quite clearly, unless you
are quoting the Bible, it doesn't.

So let's then go back to our original problem of how best to translate ויאמר
אלהים יהי אור ויהי אור How can we select the best translation that best fits
the English idiom? Tradition has it that when Martin Luther was rendering
his German translation he would make frequent visits to the market to listen
to how people speak and these visits greatly influenced his selections. Have
you ever heard anybody in the market say stuff like 'Let there become 5KG of
oranges and there became 5KG of oranges'?

James Christian


> Sincerely,
> -Steve Miller
> www.voiceInWilderness.info
> The Lord send your help from the sanctuary,
> out of Zion support thee,
> remember all your offerings,
> and consume your burnt offering. Selah (Psalm 20:2-3)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: K Randolph
> >
> > James:
> > My understanding of the verb היה is that it has much the meaning of
> > “become”. So verse three most literally could be translated as “And God
> > said, “Light, become!” and light became.” Awful English, but it gets the
> > idea across.
> >
> > How best to render this idea into English is a translation question, not
> > necessarily Hebrew.
> >
> > What I remember from history is that Wycliffe translated from the
> Vulgate,
> > while Tyndale directly from Hebrew.
> >
> > Karl W. Randolph.
>
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