in any language; as Joseph does not mean a constellation containing eleven stars, and known by the name of the eleven stars.

Genesis 41, ver. 45, 50. "Potipherah prince of On.”

In these places, and again in ch. 46, ver. 20, he is called prince of On. Now, as the Hebrew has priest here; as all the MSS. in de Rossi read priest, as well as all the ancient versions (except the Targums); and as the same word (kohen) is used in ch. 47, ver. 22, undoubtedly of Egyptian priests; I see no motive for the change, except that of saving Joseph from the scandal of marrying into the family of an idolatrous priest. It is well known that Sharon Turner has been induced to devise a theory especially to save Joseph's credit in this matter. However, if this were the motive of the change here, it would only have been consistent to have attempted a similar modification of 1 Kings 11, 1-9, which speaks of Solomon loving the daughter of Pharaoh, and other idolatrous women; nay, even of his worshiping idols himself.

1 Sam. 6, ver. 19, "He smote of the people three score and ten men, even fifty of a thousand."

The Hebrew text has: "So he smote of the people seventy man, 50,000 man." Several MS. insert and. Only three MS. omit the words 50,000 man; and one of those is characterised as being full of mistakes and omissions, by O. Tychsen, in Eichhorn's Repertorium, vol. 9, p. 276. The LXX. and Vulgate adhere to the Hebrew text, but insert and. The Syriac and Arabic read five thousand and seventy. The Targum has: "seventy men, and there were 50,000 men in the congregation." Josephus mentions only seventy slain. There is this great discrepancy among the versions; they do not, however, seem to be the foundation of this emendation, which inserts a preposition between the last two numerals, and produces a contradictory sense after all.

2 Sam. 1, ver. 19. "The beauty of Israel."

This rendering violates a fundamental rule of the Hebrew language; viz., that the former of two words united in stat. constr. cannot have the article, Ewald. § 511. The first word here has the article; and, if the above rendering be right, it must be in stat. constr. It should be: "The gazelle, O Israel, is slain on thy heights!" where too the word thy shews that Israel is an exclamation, as the ancient versions have also taken it.

2 Sam. 23, ver. 3. "He who ruleth in human form, the Just One, cometh, ruling in the fear of God."

The Hebrew text contains not a letter more than: ruling over man,

just; ruling the fear of God." The sense of these words is worth inquiry. First, a participle is of itself a relative word; ruling is equivalent to he who rules, Ewald. § 596. Any Lexicon will then shew that the verb to rule governs its object mediately, by a preposition : he who ruleth in man; i. e., over man. The next word, just, has no article; it is, therefore, no violation of the construction to take it adverbially he who ruleth over man justly. Then, as to the words, "the fear of God," they correspond, in the parallelism, to justly, which shews that the sense is: he who ruleth in the fear of God. Many MSS. and even two printed editions, actually read in; but, even without the preposition, the words might be taken as an accusative of the manner. The preposition has been omitted, probably, in order to avoid making "the fear of God" appear to be the object of the verb in the same way as man " is just before. The fourth verse begins with Vau consequutivum, and contains the apodosis. If any rule in the fear of God, so is it like when the morning is bright, the sun shines, &c. The whole, then, gives a beautiful and strictly legitimate sense.

66

Job 5, ver. 7. "For man is not born to trouble."

When I first saw this emendation, I was persuaded it had been derived,-through a misapprehension of his real meaning,-from a note of Professor Lee, in his commentary to this verse. The note is in itself so extraordinary, that it is worth while to cite a portion of it: "Is born to, or for, sin." It would hardly be expected from Eliphaz, that man was necessarily born to sorrow; for this would be at once to ascribe to the Almighty a most unmerciful appointment-a sentiment which Eliphaz carefully avoids; nay, condemns. Besides, as 'amal and aven occurring here, and, indeed, elsewhere, cannot always be taken to signify the misery attendant upon sin, but rather sin itself; I see no good reason for adopting the rendering of the Authorized Version."*. . . ." As the sparks fly upwards. But sparks do not fly upwards naturally any more than they do downwards. The sentiment here given, therefore, is not true in itself, and it is as little applicable to the text." The reader may now judge on what ground

* I am at a loss to ascertain how any one can consider it a more merciful appointment of God, if men were born to sin, than to toil and trouble; which is the primary and usual sense of 'amal. For, not to mention that to be born to sin would be to be born to eternal misery; whereas, to be born to trouble would, at worst, not necessarily imply more than the inheritance of the sorrows of this transitory state, which may even "work for us a far more exceeding weight of glory;"-the words in Gen. 3, 19; countless other passages in Job, and the whole of Ecclesiastes, testify to the fact that man is born to trouble.

+ Nevertheless, the sparks do fly upwards; those of a wood-fire especially, on account of their lightness. And they do so naturally too. A hatural law causes a cur

in the absence of even a suspicion that any one had directly sanctioned the insertion of not in this place-I came to ascribe this emendation to an imperfect recollection, or knowledge, of the precise thing denied in Professor Lee's remark. Now, however, I learn by a letter signed And (vindicating this very Bible from a review in the Eclectic), that it was made on the authority of Dr. Roberts, of Eton. As I do not possess his work, I can only quote his critical canon as I find it in the letter: "Owing to the idiomatic brevity of the Hebrew language, a negative is seldom or never repeated in the members of an argument or sentence, but its influence extends throughout the whole; and a correct translation into another idiom will require a repetition of the negative. Guided by this well-known rule, our venerated translators have in Job, 7, 1; Ps. 9, 18; and 75, 5, and a multitude of similar passages, repeated the negative; from all which it must be withdrawn, unless repeated here. On this point, Kennicott, Chandler, and Clarke, are conclusive." Against this canon, as here stated, I take leave to protest most warmly. I object to it for stating, that to be done "seldom or never" which is the rule of the language, and for making the exception the rule; and I utterly deny that the construction of our verse is so similar to the three passages cited, that they must consistently either all insert, or all omit, the negative. Besides, we are here told of an astonishing licence, without any hint that there are laws which determine when it is allowed, and when not, Nevertheless, all those who have acquired a just sense of any language, must, on first hearing of such a licence in Hebrew, feel persuaded that, whether it be yet detected or not, there must always be some nice circumstances of construction which mark the occasions on which it is admissible; or the language would be utterly unsafe for daily use, much more for the vehicle of saving Truth. It may be useful, then, to give the true canon here with the strict limitations which circumscribe its use, and preclude its dangerous abuse. I find the following in Ewald's Kritische Grammatik, p. 657, which I translate for the reader's benefit. "Words or propositions, which are adjoined, with a negative sense, to what precedes, are negatived by, neque; even the other words of the proposition are sometimes repeated, Judges 8, 23. It is remarkable that the second proposition may sometimes have by itself, when the first is negative. This is, however, impossible, unless the second proposition is very closely attached to the first, rent of air to be necessary to the existence of a fire. The same agency that contributes to the pyramidal shape of the flame, and to the ascent of the smoke, whirls the sparks up also.

and the sense is continued without interruption; at the same time, the negative, the influence of which extends through both propositions, must be placed at the beginning of the first. Thus:-1. When the second proposition is attached by Vau consequutivum, which is the closest connexion and continuation, as, Not hast thou brought us and given us, Numb. 16, 14: Deut. 7, 25; 24, 15: Lev. 19, 13: Gen. 43, 9: 1 Sam. 20, 12: Ps. 44, 19. This is the only case in which this licence is allowed in prose; otherwise, 7, is always repeated, as Jer. 14, 14. 2. In poetry, the copula also may be omitted, when the second proposition, in parallelism, is only a paraphrase of the first, and the sense thus remains in suspenso, as, Not Sheol praises Thee, Death celebrates Thee, Is. 38, 18; 23, 4: Mich. 7, 1: Ps. 9, 19. The copula is rarely inserted, as Ps. 38, 1: Is. 28, 27: Amos. 9, 10. According to this, it is very evident, that passages like Deut. 33, 6: "Let Reuben live and not die, and let his men be a number, i. e., numerous, cannot be instances of this licence, because the negative can have no influence on the second member." It may tend to diminish the apparent boldness in the construction of some of the passages which fall under this rule, to remark, first, that in such a case as, Not hast thou brought us and given us, the insertion of a second negative is more in accordance with our occidental notions, than necessarily implied in the Hebrew. To explain: the first verb is in the perfect tense, Thou hast not brought us; the second verb is in the imperfect; so that the copula is not a mere conjunction here, but a sign that the second verb is the further development, the consequence of the first. It is therefore, strictly: Thou hast not brought us, so that thou givest us; or, and then given us. If the reader properly apprehends the force of this construction, particularly the change of tense, he will understand in what a modified sense the negative can here be said to be extended to the second member. With regard to other passages, it may be observed, secondly, that the Latin language also admits a similar omission of the negative. For instance, Job 7, ver. 1, is literally: Nonne militia homini super terram, et sicut dies mercenarii dies ejus? This is allowable in Latin, because the verb to be may be omitted in it, as in Hebrew. We are obliged to express that verb in the first member, and then, on account of the difference of number in the two clauses, we must express it again in the second, and are forced to repeat the negative to prevent the last member being affirmative. Whereas, with two singulars, we also could use the same liberty: e. g. Is not health a boon, and peace, a blessing? Let us, however, examine the verse in

question, to see whether any of the conditions under which this licence is allowable, are to be found in it. The words, For man is born to trouble, do not constitute a continuation, or second member of a sentence, as they form the commencement of a new verse; and the causal and adversative particle ki, for, is a word which must be considered, if any, to mark an interruption in the direct flow of the sense, inasmuch as it always begins a new sentence. I would, therefore, invert the canon, as stated by Anna, and assert, that if the negative is to be inserted in this verse according to a critical principle, a judicious application of the same rule, would, even after the nicest consideration of identity of construction, succeed in destroying a large portion of the present versions of Scripture; particularly if due attention were paid to an extravagant remark of Noldius (Concord. Partt. p. 753) : "As the whole Pentateuch is only one verse, and as the influence of a negative does pass from one member of a verse to another, why may it not from one verse to another ?" But, really, if there be any one with whom the above arguments have no weight, who is only vulnerable on the "heel" of authority, let him consider how remarkable it is, that not one of the ancient versions (in Walton) has inserted the negative; and that neither I. H. Michaelis (in his "Adnotatt. in "Hagiogr."), nor Schultens (in his Comment.), nor I. D. Michaelis (in his German translation of the Bible, with notes for the unlearned), nor Eichhorn (in his translation of Job, in the Allgem. Bibl. Bibliothek), nor Rosenmüller (in his Scholia), nor Umbreit, nor Ewald, (in their commentaries), have alluded to the necessity of supplying it here; and these names contain some of the greatest Orientalists in the world; but that the great discovery is first made by the Provost of Eton.

Hab. 1, ver. 5. "Behold, ye despisers among the nations, and regard."

The

The Hebrew has: Look ye among the nations, and regard; in which, however, "among the nations," is the object of the verb mediately dependent, as is common with verbs of sense, Ewald. § 521. It is, therefore, nearly equivalent to: Behold the nations! LXX, Syriac, and Arabic, read: Behold, ye despisers; which Cappellus and others suppose to have arisen from their having read bog'dim, despisers, instead of baggoüm, in the nations; a very conceivable change. The emendation here, however, consists in uniting the reading of the Hebrew text and that of the versions, and thus produces a text sanctioned by neither.

N.