Alward's Confused
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Wed, 21 Oct 1998 16:57:14 -0700 (00909032234, 2.2.32.19981021235714.0087ba60@midwest.net)
At 01:20 PM 10/21/98 EDT, JAlw@aol.com wrote:
>Joe Alward:
>
>Strong's does say that 'asah lat means "did enchantment(s)", I agree. What is
>so disappointing is that the translation offered by my only current source of
>Hebrew (the Blue Letter Bible) does not have anything to say about the "so"
>after the "did", and that is an extremely important word, if I've understood
>the "ken" debate correctly.
>
>Crea gave me several resources which he believes are better than Strongs, but
>I don't want to buy them all. I would like to look at the full translation of
>Exodus 7:22, but don't know in which book it would be found. Will you tell me
>the name of the text you used? Does it show that the translation is "....and
>the magicians did in like manner with their enchantments"?
>
>On a related matter, let me ask about the use of the words "did so". I could
>be completely wrong about this, but it seems that Farrell was making the point
>that the magicians "did so" with their enchantments meant that they did
>everything Moses had done with his rod waving and water conversion. Now, it
>seems that "did so" in the lice story only meant that the magicians had waved
>their rods in an attempt to match Aaron's magic. Since they failed, doesn't
>that mean that "did so" in the lice plague story only meant "waved their rods
>like Aaron did"? If so, then how can we be sure that "did so" in the blood
>plague story meant "did everything that Moses did"? We're not told the result
>of the magicians' rod waving, so aren't we left somewhat in the dark? Or is
>my confusion purely the result of consulting a flawed Strongs translation?
>
TILL
If you will check the word "so" in Strong's concordance, you will see that
he lists it as the word that was represented by # 3651 [ken] in Exodus 7:6,
10, 20, and 22, all of which verses I have discussed. If you check the word
"manner" in Strong's, you will see that he lists it as the word that was
represented by #3651 in the Hebrew text at 7:22. In Exodus 8, Strong lists
#3651 [ken] only once, and this is in verse 24, which says, "And the LORD
did so...." However, "so" is used in the KJV in both verses 7 and 18:
>7 And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs
upon the land of Egypt.
>
>18 And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice,
but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast.
>
I took this as an indication that even though "so" is in the KJV in both of
these verses, "ken" must not be in the Hebrew text. Otherwise, why wouldn't
Strong have listed Exodus 8:7 and Exodus 8:18 as places where "ken" appears?
I looked in my Hebrew text and found a printing flaw that made Exodus
8:15-21 too dim to read. Verse 7, however, is readable, and I could not
find "ken" in it. My surmise, then, is that even though the word "so" is in
verses 7 and 18 in the KJV, "ken" is not in the Hebrew text.
I have checked different translations of verse 18 and found entirely
different renderings from the KJV's "did so with their enchantments."
RSV: The magicians tried by their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they
could not.
NRSV: The magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, but they
could not.
NASV: And the magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats,
but they could not.
REB: The magicians tried to produce maggots in the same way by their spells,
but they failed.
JERUSALEM: The magicians with their witchcraft tried to produce mosquitoes
and failed.
Other versions also render the verse to mean that the magicians tried but
failed, so surely there is a textual reason for this translation. An
identical expression in two verses of an English translation doesn't
necessarily mean that the expressions were identical in the original, and
that appears to be the case here. Anyway, let's give Joe a gold star for
trying.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net