Yes, I am doing Ruth because I am currently translating Ruth in Hebrew. You wanna fight about it? Romans went for aaaages!
This will be funny, actually. Now that I've studied a little Hebrew, I can almost begin to give opinions as to what I think of the translations and have it mean something.
Almost.
vs 1
You will notice that only the KJV says "When the judges judged". The thing about the word for "judges" is that it can just as easily mean "leaders". The verb form takes the same root as the noun, and so you end up with judges judging, but it could really be just as well interpreted as any of the other translations' words. Judges is traditional because of the book of judges.
It is actually quite interesting how close to the original the translation is. At least, in simple clauses like this one.
The land, by the way, is Israel. Basically, if "the land" isn't specified in the OT, it's Israel.
vs 2
Almost all of these names are well transliterated. The only one that is weird, oddly, is Naomi - which is really No-omi.
vs 3
Why is this important? Because a wife without a husband is a tragic thing. But hey, at least she has two sons to look after her.
vs 4
Again, the names are pretty good - but it's Root really (of course, that's just according to what I've learned). And calling your daughter Root in this day and age - well, need I say more.
vs 5
Oops, there goes her sons too. Moab's a dangerous place. Naomi is now well and truly very poor. Men bring in the bacon, remember (odd turn of phrase when used about Jews, really), so without them women are pretty much poverty stricken.
vs 6
Home being Bethlehem.
vs 7
Her daughters-in-law (a bloody difficult word, by the way) go with her, and that's a little odd. I mean, the rules were that if Naomi had any more sons, they would get to marry them. But Naomi is old, and she's not likely to get married again. Not only that, but they were leaving to go live in a land that wasn't all that fond of Moabites, because they were foreigners.
vs 8
Important sidenote: you will see that Naomi tells them to go to their mother's house, not their father's house - that is a very female point-of-view for those days. This (and other things in Ruth) has led some scholars to suggest that Ruth was written by a woman.
Notice also that Naomi believes full well that it is possible for the LORD to be able to bless and look after these two women - neither of whom are Jews, and neither of whom would be living in Israel. That is a very strong faith for a time when people didn't really seem to understand God that well.
vs 9
TNIV seems to have a misprint - "Good-by". Apparently she must have been a pretty good mum-in-law, because they don't want to leave her! Perhaps they also realise that there is little waiting for them back in Moab.
vs 10
So, instead, they will go back to be with her people. Now, it could be that they thought that she had some sort of relatives that they could marry.
vs 11
Naomi deals with the first thing first - she's not going to have any more kids, so she can't produce husbands for them. This just shows you how much a woman was valueless without her husband.
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1 comment:
Yay, Ruth! I'll come with you and have an intermission from Romans. It's hard to make up big chunks of your blog with all the other reading and studying I have to do, poor me.
We're also studying Ruth in my OT Lit & Themes class. It was pointed out there that women on their own in this time of the Judges weren't just bad off economically, but were staggeringly vulnerable to abuse. "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" - the strong did what they liked and the weak were preyed on. A man was at least some protection, providing of course that he doesn't give you over to a mob in order to save his own hide (ie, Judges 19). An older woman travelling from Moab to Bethlehem alone? Even a trio of women are easily taken advantage of.
I don't know, it just makes things more urgent when you realize the extent of the vulnerability of the widow and the orphan in that society.
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