Bible Translation: Shifting Meanings, like Shifting Sands - Prov. 3:3

Here is part of Proverbs 3:3, according to the Vulgate (ca. 400 CE):
misericordia et veritas non te deserant

There is no doubt about the meaning of these words. They mean "May mercy and truth be not absent from you."

Moving ahead to the King James Version of 1611:
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee

The Douay - Challoner (Catholic) version of 1749-50:
Let not mercy and truth leave thee . . .

Reina Valera Revisada (1977):
Nunca se aparten de ti la misericordia y la verdad (may mercy and truth never leave you)

[So far, so good.]

Revised Standard Version (RSV), 1952:
Let not loyalty and faithfulness forsake you.

[Loyalty and faithfulness? What happened to "mercy and truth?"]

The Confraternity Version (Catholic, 1961):
Let not kindness and fidelity leave you.

The New International Version (1973-84):
Let love and faithfulness never leave you.

[Love and faithfulness?]

The New American Bible (Catholic, 1970):
Let not kindness and fidelity leave you . . .

[Kindness and fidelity?]

New American Standard Bible (NASB, 1960-75):
Let not kindness and truth leave you . . .

Tanakh "The Holy Scriptures" Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 1997:

The Hebrew text (p. 802), shows the correct words, חסד (in Biblical Hebrew this means "mercy") and אמת ("truth"), but the English on the facing page says "Let not loyal love and truth forsake thee." At least they got it half right.

Before I go any farther, I should say that there are many more such examples that I could use. The word חסד (mercy) appears no less than eight times in the Psalms, and in six of those cases it is paired with אמת (truth). Similarly, "mercy" appears no less than four times in Proverbs (also paired with "truth") and it is, so far as I know, always mistranslated in those modern translations. A favorite circumlocution is "lovingkindness," and that same circumlocution has even infected a recent translation of the Septuagint. Have we suddenly learned something about the Greek language that we didn't know before? I don't think so.

To be fair, part of the problem may be due to semantic drift in Modern Hebrew, where חסד is usually used to mean "grace, favor, righteousness, charity," rather than "mercy." But, where there is an imbalance of power, "mercy " is what we want. In any case, it would be absurd to apply Modern Hebrew meanings to a document written in Biblical Hebrew, thousands of years before the modern language existed.

To return to Saint Jerome's Vulgate, mentioned at the beginning of this little article, there is some question as to whether the words "misericordia et veritas" were translated from Hebrew, or from the Greek of the Septuagint, He claimed to be translating the Old Testament directly from Hebrew, and had Jewish informants to help him do that, but he may in some cases have translated from the Greek, where the word for "mercy" would be "eleos." Do we know for sure what it means? Yes, we do.

When I was a boy, and the Mass was still said in Latin, there was, in the part of the Mass called the Introit, a small litany in Greek. It was the only part of the older, Greek liturgy that had survived in the Latin Mass. It was called the Kyrie Eleison, which means "Lord, have mercy." I shall have to ask my friend Deborah Lorentz how this is handled when the Mass is said in English. I am sure that no one says, "Lord, have lovingkindness."

Text (except for Biblical quotations) © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.