The Song 8:13-14 Alter

Alter, Song 2:16–17:

My lover is mine and I am his, / who grazes among the lilies. / Until morning’s breeze blows / and the shadows flee, / turn round, be like a deer, my love, / or like a gazelle / on the cloven mountains.

My version

2:16 My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies.
17C Till the day respires and the shadows withdraw,
surround, be like, you, my beloved, the gazelle or the faun of the hart upon the rugged mountains. S

There's a reason I stuck with beloved. It was too familiar. I tried cherished but it didn't didn't cut it for me. And infatuated was too much though I have rendered this stem that way in 5:9. You can see that the Hebrew is untranslatable with a repetition of infatuate. דוד is the stem, David (1079 times), beloved (42 times), also uncle, caress, pannier, infatuation, aunt, nipple, mandrake. It's a word with rich overtones. It is not related to אהב to love, but I allowed it to stand anyway. My rules would stop me from using lover, but I don't resolve the archaic prefix 'be' in my lemma routines so beloved follows my rules. (And the exceptions are documented and clear in my full concordance, 2500 pages from the database).

Why such infatuation with your beloved, fairest among women?
Why such infatuation with your beloved that thus you adjure us?

Alter's who grazes is more accurate than my he grazes. But it is not a question, though I do sometimes use that English construction also for a participle.

My animal names are reversed from his. I probably couldn't tell the difference between a hart and a gazelle, both types of deer? (Hart always reminds me of an editor who corrected my use of hart in a children's story to heart like Microsoft Word does.) Neither word makes a good word play in English for God like the Hebrew האילים does for האלוהים. I will admit I may have chosen the wrong word for some stem somewhere. But if I have, I have done it with full consistency. And it would not be hard to find and correct.

These exercises are of great value to me to test what I have done. Where, I wondered for a minute, did that you appear from in verse 17? It is an odd rendering. (Yes, I find my work odd at times.) There is a לך in the verse, also dropped by Alter (or his reporter). It is usually to you or for you or yours. It is also implied by the command be like.

Let's look at the music. The word leka is highlighted by an emphatic ornament. It should not be dropped.

Song 2:17, the ornament on לך (leka) showing its importance in the verse

Alter, Song 8:13–14:

David Bentley Hart writes: And here his manifest fondness for poetic brevity is especially effective. I want to see more than general praise in the reviews. But I have to give him credit, he has given me several examples in his review. I will look at them closely over the next several days.

You who dwell in the garden, / friends listen for your voice. / Let me hear it. / —Flee my lover and be like a deer / or like a gazelle / on the spice mountains

I have avoided em dashes. My punctuation is generally limited to period, comma, question mark, the very occasional colon, an even rarer exclamation point, and a few parentheses. I have no footnotes, but occasionally insert a bracketed interpretation of a name into the text itself. My work I hope will be readable and singable (with adjustments for underlay). It is intended to be read and sung without explanation. I am not a scholar that I should read commentaries and write yet another. The only commentary I allow myself is selection of musical examples and a caption for each.

13 Those sitting in gardens, companions attending, make me hear your voice.

14 Run away, my beloved, and you be like a gazelle or the faun of the hart, on the mountains of spices.

There is no rest in either verse 13 or 14.

Alter has dropped the word מקשׁיבים that I have rendered as attending (stem קשׁב).

Gardens is plural, so I have interpreted the prior participle as plural also.

Alter is getting lots of press. There is another article by him in ASOR here. I sure agree with him thoroughly about נפשׁ. His paragraph is excellent and his example from Psalm 63:2. I have not used throat here though I use this gloss elsewhere for נפשׁ. And I am tempted, but I will leave it to the reader to imagine the alternative. I like his herding of wind. My own rendering of this is tending of wind. Alter gives good examples from his work.

I also agree that a rendering of this should be foreign rather than familiar, but I am not opposed to occasional lapses into colloquialism.  Even his use of 'lover' above is too modern a word. Decorum is not an adjective I need to apply to the Bible as he does. Some of it is far from decorous. Some of it (e.g. pissing against the wall, or the taunt the male peers of Rehoboam suggested to him in 1 Kings 12:10) is blatantly rude.  Thus you will speak to them, My wee is thicker than the loins of my father.

Ruth 2:3-7 Alter and music

You have seen the care with which I have followed concordance as a strategy over these past 6 years since the publication of my first book on the Scriptures, Seeing the Psalter.

I worked with the poetry of the Psalms first. Among my first works with the prose was the book of Ruth. So here I will compare the English of three versions.

Have I written English in my work? This is a question I have worried about. Reading and studying a foreign tongue twists ones own in unpredictable ways. Consider the language of Yoda in the Star Wars films. Sometimes I even followed Dr. Seuss as my model. (My tongue is in my cheek.)

But seriously, I am also supposed to be paying attention to the music. To be fair, I don't always try to underlay the text. I would be working for several more years to do this. But we have all the music available. So there's nothing to stop you all from doing this. Or from reading my close translation for the music.

Here are, line by line, Alter, NRSV, and Bob with music for Ruth 2:3 to 7. And each musical line shows the Hebrew, the pulse, and the cadences and ornaments. I do not know who invented these hand-signals but they are fantastically good for the text which itself is so dearly loved. It would be a shame to get it wrong. And they are much more accurate as to tone and rhythm than any abstract poetical concepts.

I am taking my information from the section of the review of Alter's translation by Adele Berlin, whose presentation skill I greatly admire.

I have put the line breaks where the cadence on the subdominant is in the music. This is a fascinating comparison. One can see the loves and fears about English in each translation. One can also see the rhythmic limitations of the English immediately.

Verse 3
A. And she went and came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers,
N. So she went. She came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers.
B. And she went, and she came, and she gleaned in the field, following the reapers.

Ruth 2:3 showing the pulse and cadence of the Hebrew text

Both Alter and NRSV miss the pulse of the first part of the verse. The musical notes give an accurate representation of the syllables if you are in to counting.

A. and it chanced that she came upon the plot of Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
N. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelek.
B. And she chanced by chance on the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelek.

Why did Alter vary the gloss for field to plot? Quite unnecessary here. Both NRSV and Alter do not repeat the doubled verb. I often don't also. But in this case the lilt is unmistakable. Why not repeat it? The music reveals that this is a story to be told with a living pulse. It is not just a boring narrative.

Verse 4

A. And look, Boaz was coming from Bethlehem, and he said to the reapers, “May the Lord be with you!”
N. Just then Boaz came from Bethlehem. He said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you.”
B. And behold Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, Yahweh be with you.

A. and they said, “May the Lord bless you!”
N. They answered, “The Lord bless you.”
B. And they said to him, Yahweh bless you.

Ruth 2:4 music

Why would Alter and NRSV omit the words 'to him'? I am baffled. Note the sudden high C - the appearance of Boaz. The music paints an unexpected coincidence.

Verse 5

A. And Boaz said to his lad who was stationed over the reapers,
“Whose is this young woman?”
N. Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers,
“To whom does this young woman belong?”

B. And Boaz said to his lad who was monitoring the reapers,
Whose is that lass? 

Ruth 2:5 music

Now the high C highlights the question to come before it is spoken - hey, who is this. Pop music 3000 years ago. Here Alter and even more NRSV have a fuller syllable count for the notes. But the emphasis in the English is really awkward when you set it. My spondee fits one word per note in this case: whose (A) is (g#) that (f) lass (e).

Verse 6
A. And the lad stationed over the reapers answered and said,
“She is a young Moabite woman who has come back with Naomi from the plain of Moab.
N. The servant who was in charge of the reapers answered,
“She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.
B. And the lad monitoring the reapers answered and he said,
She is the Moabite lass, she who returned with Naomi from the fields of Moab. 

Ruth 2:6 music

If you wish - rephrase as you set the music - and answered the lad ... that gets the ornament on the right word. To rephrase accurately (as opposed to paraphrasing), you need a concordant reading to work from. That's what you get with Bob's Bible, the only English reading that is for the music.

The silluq on Moabite draws in mystery by prematurely returning us to the tonic. Don't get involved with a Moabite. Alter repeats young woman accurately. NRSV just misses it. I chose lass to go with lad. NRSV servant is traditional but conflicts for me with אבד.

Verse 7

A. And she said, ‘Let me glean, pray, and gather from among the sheaves behind the reapers.’
N. She said, ‘Please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers.’ 

B. And she had said, Please let me glean, and gather among the bales following the reapers. 

A. And she has come and stood since the morning till now. She has barely stayed in the house.”
N. So she came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting even for a moment.”
B. And she came and she stood from then, the morning, and till this minute, sitting in the house briefly.

Ruth 2:7 music

I admit I could have avoided using the pluperfect. Note the sudden drop on zeh (this) and the ornament on morning (if you are setting English words to the Hebrew, feel free to leave out notes when the syllable count doesn't match.)

Psalm 91 - alternative readings

Psalm 91 paired with psalm 90 begins book 4 of the Psalms. This alone gives it a foundation. Book 4 is framed by Moses (90 and 106) and Renewal (the two prayers in the book, 90 and 102).

Moses and renewal are the solution to the problems of books 2 and 3 of the Psalms. So how to phrase this Psalm. I will look at comparisons of select verses of KJV, Prayer book, Alter, and Bob. These verses are selected because I have this report of Alter's version via Adam Kirsch in my hand.

KJV: verses 9 - 12
9 Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge,
even the most High, thy habitation;
10 There shall no evil befall thee,
neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 They shall bear thee up in their hands,
lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

9 For you—the Lord is your refuge,
the Most High you have made your abode.
10 No harm will befall you,
nor affliction draw near to your tent.
11 For His messengers He charges for you
to guard you on all your ways.
12 On their palms they lift you up
lest your foot be bruised by a stone.

Interpreting the accents in the Hebrew text per the key of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura for Psalms 91:9-12

Here are my few verses - then we will see what can be learned.

⁹ For you Yahweh are my refuge.
The Most High you have set up as your habitation.
¹⁰ Evil will not opportune you,
and contagion will not approach within your tent.
^11B For his messengers he will command about you,
to keep you in all your ways.
¹² In their palms they will lift you up,
lest you stub your foot with a stone.

What are the differences?

There is much that is agreed. - The atnah for Alter and for me determines the phrasing. The KJV is really awkward in verse 9. Did they have a problem with direct speech to 'the LORD' and then an immediate switch of point of view? This happens all the time in the Psalms. KJV has made a single sentence where it does not seem to be necessary.

Alter has your refuge. The Hebrew in the Leningrad codex is my refuge.

Alter and I have differences in gloss. My glosses are controlled by a program that will not let me overlap English lemma forms with multiple Hebrew stems unless I can justify it and I explicitly create an exception to this rule. The glosses he uses that would violate the rules for me are these:

• abode - for me is גור. 
• made עשה, vs set שום. Make is of course a common helping verb. Best avoided as the main gloss for a stem if עשה is not actually used.
• habitation מוען is a key word linking this Psalm to Psalm 90. (Prayer and response). I wonder if he rendered Psalm 90:1 with abode or attempted the word play in that psalm with verse 17 נעם, the letters reversed (I didn't).
• harm is not among my synonyms for רעע evil. Harm (my word for אסן occurs 5 times only) is too bland.
• אנה is opportune where he has befall which for me is a gloss for קרה.
• approach for me is קרב and I do allow the synonym draw near, though it is tied to near, since draw out is a separate stem. 
• affliction for me is ענה. This word is נגע touch, hence contagion.
• charge does not suggest command to me. צוה is the stem. 678 of 685 uses of this stem are command/commandment in my reading. I also allow commission, and three times set in order.
• bruise. This is a loaded word in the traditional English. KJV overlaps the stems in the Hebrew. Genesis 3:15 has the stem שׁוף which is used only 4 times in the Bible. Isaiah 53 is not this stem but דכא. The sense is crushing. It is simply not possible to study the word relationships by free association of synonyms in the KJV. Poetry or not, this KJV translation has a lot of damage to answer for. The word I use here is stub for the stem נגף. 

So in 4 verses, Alter and I have 8 significant disagreements. He is flexible in his glossing, as much or more than the KJV. This to my mind leads eventually to false associations and theological short-circuits.

Some of my separations are perhaps too rigid. Perhaps I should allow more m to n relationships. It could be possible to justify more variation than I have allowed, but not in the name of literary form. Justification would come through the assessment of the development of the Hebrew language over the period 1200 BCE to 200 BCE, a thousand years. I am unconvinced of anything I have read on the inferences about the history of the language itself.

Here's my word for word. Hover to see the stem. There is too much information to process even with just 4 verses.

	9	כי forכי אתה youאתה יהוה Yahwehיהוה מחסי are my refugeחסה עליון the Most Highעליון שׂמת you have set upשׂום מעונך as your habitationמעון
	10	לא notלא תאנה will opportuneאנה אליך youאל רעה evilרעע ונגע and contagionנגע לא notלא יקרב will approachקרב באהלך within your tentאהל
	11	כי forכי מלאכיו his messengersמלאך יצוה he will commandצוה לך about youל לשׁמרך to keep youשׁמר בכל in allכל דרכיך your waysדרך
	12	על inעל כפים their palmsכף ישׂאונך they will lift you upנשׂא פן lestפן תגף you stubנגף באבן with a stoneאבן רגלך your footרגל

Finally, note the stems in this passage beginning with נג and a couple of others that seem possibly related by sound.

נגח gore (7) push back (5) pushing back (1)
נגן string (9) perform (8) music (5) vat (4) performed music (2) accompany (1) musician (1) orchestra (1) performance (1) string play (1) vats (1) warble (1)
נגע touch (143) contagion (79) join (4) contagious (1)
נגף plague (78) stub (3) -- (1)
נגר wrung out (6) wring out (2) wrings out (1)
נגשׁ overture (39) come close (37) came close (30) brought close (10) bring close (9) bump (1) lump (1)
נגשׂ taskmaster (11) harass (5) exact (4) exploit (2) exacting tax (1)

Hope for the soulless reading

Psalm 104:29
I just happened to notice this while making adjustments to the Psalms. Yes, even the psalms!

You hide your face. They are vexed.
You gather their spirit. They expire,
and to their dust they return.

Note that it reads, to their dust.

Now who would have read that the dust that constitutes all those living, even Leviathan, should continue to claim their dust after their expiration date?

Is this a conservation law, like matter or energy? The faith in e=mc²

It may take a little time before our scientific techniques can raise the dead. In the meanwhile, continue in hope, persevere in faithfulness to your calling, and strive to love. That means, [love] Do not harm your colleague or associate by any form of violence or coercion. [faithfulness] Persevere in the detail work that you must do. [hope] Do not listen to unsubstantiated reports - avoid hype.

If you believe in the faithfulness of Jesus, you have motivation to imitate.

In Job 3 another possible idea of hope for rest in a sleeper that had never been born.

¹³ For now I would be lying down and quiet.
I would be asleep then. It would be my rest,

¹⁴ with kings and counselors of earth,
who built their deserts,

^15B or with nobility, their gold,
their houses filled with silver,

^16C or as a miscarriage buried I had not been,
as infants who did not see light.

^17B There the wicked set aside shuddering,
and there rest those who are weary of power.

Ah, Wordsworth - intimations. It is curious to compare the 'not ever' with the 'has been'. Might Job have remained solely an idea?

But perhaps 14:12 is one reason there is so little of Job in the NT

So a person lies down and does not arise.

Till the heavens wear out they will not awaken,

and will not be roused from their sleep.

If the heavens are already worn out, we may have a few surprises in store for us on the earth.

Of course today I am working through the writings correcting inconsistencies between my glossary and my sentences. I am astonished at how few changes I am making to the text, but there are some. I am nearly finished. The number of changes will exceed 10% of the verses. But you knew that.

I still won't find all my errors and misjudgments with this technique. But I will have found most of the obvious blunders. I expect I will also do a compare with Word of the text approaching epub status. That is to make sure I have the same copy in the epub as is in the database. I still need readers who will give feedback. Think of it as an crowd sourced reading. Epub's will be complimentary to volunteers who register to give feedback.

Psalm 137:1, a literary translation

It is impossible to ignore the solo translation of Robert Alter. If I were rich enough, I might buy a copy, but I think I will wait till the second or third edition or maybe wait till the library gets a copy.

Does anyone really read the whole story?

Reviewers are talking about the literary quality and intent of his reading and commentary. And he is a literary expert.

One of his aims is syllabic equivalence for poetry (per Aviva Kushner in the Jewish Review of Books) My readings on this blog always include a syllable count. (It may not always be correct - but it's automated and therefore consistent, and likely within +/-1).

As for my literary background, it is limited to what I have sung and read. I do not teach literature. I too have tried to imitate the Hebrew syllabic count, but for the sake of the music. Nonetheless, there are significant conflicts with such an attempt, a myriad of small decisions, and the major decision I made to enforce a concordant translation (obeying rules of mapping of Hebrew stems to English lemma forms, with exceptions justified).

I also associate Alter with recognition of recurring words as a technique and foreignness as a translation strategy. These are vague memories. I know I have read a bit of his output in the past. Probably his Art of Biblical Narrative. (Heavens! I even have a copy on my shelf - a gift from my old school friend, Pierre Cliche. And there is an example of recurrence from Genesis 37 right away with the stem נכר, foreign, or recognize.)

I enjoy the scholars and I am sure it is very hard work to be one. (Alter even admits to not knowing if scholars have addressed some things. See ABN page 4.) Scholarship has demands that also interfere with actually reading the whole story itself. Mind you, some interference is required when we read badly.

So how do we compare his reading, hyped by the New York Times, with Bob's Bible, hyped by no one yet - fortunately (I am in intensive correction and review mode at the moment). Interestingly enough, both our Bibles are soulless. We never use the word soul in translation. This is neither Alter's doing nor mine. It is an emergence from the conversation in the late 20th century in the English Western world - and only a part of that world. I don't know if he is the first to suggest not using soul as a gloss but I highly doubt it. I also consider this a loss to the language, but one cannot use a word, even a beautiful one, if its sense is a misreading.

No one knows what the English soul is supposed to signify. No one can define eternal either. Yes you can run to Aquinas - 'no term either end'. But this is a circular definition for an unknown aspect of time. (And Aquinas is dead wrong about the instantaneous nature of light.) Time in a five dimensional universe, like a circle in two dimensions, may have neither beginning nor end.

Curiously enough, if we put those two words together we get eternal soul, one unknown times another. This is simply confusion. But it may say to you if you think time is important, Soul, whatever you are, you are important. And that should bring us right back to earth and the need to care for each other. So - soulless we both are, but not without care. (נפשׁ is of course not confined to humans in the Biblical text, but you need to read the whole story to know that.)

So can we do a little analysis of 1 verse? (Continuing Ronald Hendel's example in the same set of reviews).

KJV:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Coverdale (prayer book):
By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, // when we remembered thee, O Sion.

Alter:

By Babylon's streams / there we sat, oh we wept, / when we recalled Zion

Bob's Bible (me):

Psalms 137		Fn		Min	Max	Syll
עַ֥ל נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זָכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן	1	f	By the rivers of Babel - there we sat, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion.	3e	4B	14 7

Word for word:

	1	על byעל נהרות the rivers ofנהר בבל Babelבבל שׁם thereשׁם ישׁבנו we satישׁב גם yeaגם בכינו we weptבכה בזכרנו when we rememberedזכר את --את ציון Zionציון

rivers (נהר)? waters (מים)? or streams (פלג)?

You can see there is a choice - I have the stems to glosses associated as noted. It is a fixed rule of mine not to overlap such clearly defined separations in this case.

sat or sat down?
irrelevant in my opinion - though down is not in the Hebrew, there would be no conflict for my rules if I wanted to say sat down.

remember or recall?
As it happens, I don't ever use the gloss recall, but the resonance of remember will be lost if recall is a variation for זכר, The Name itself is at stake here.

bi-colon or tri-colon?

In my opinion the accents do not support a tri-colon. The revia is weaker than the ole-veyored. In the Psalms, (and their doubles in the prose books) it is possible to observe a pause at revia or zaqef-qatan, but I generally limit it to a comma. There is no cadence on Babel.

Note the defects in the authorized prayer book translation. No שׁם no גם.

Note also that the first of the music is f not the tonic e. This indicates that Psalm 137 is connected to what has come before in some fashion. This Psalm comes out of the blue after the songs of ascent and the two almost competitive psalms 135 and 136 - no hint of the exile. Psalm 137 is continuing the story of books 2 and 3. It is a call not to forget.

I might do some more verses. But my initial impression is that a literary motive is not sufficient as a priority when translating. 

Ha ha

More about mistakes - Remnant of Giants has a post about famous typos in Bibles. I found more than one missing negative in my corrections so far.

No one ever does anything alone.

Mistakes and mangled verses

For 50 years I have been a programmer. One thing you learn as a programmer is how to control the mistakes that programmers make. Typical rates of error in a programming system have not changed because humans who do the programming have not changed. I was told when I began to expect a coding error in every 10 lines of code. A 10% error rate. Automated programming helps. It can reduce the error rate to zero. Of course it automates the unknown limitations of its source and process. But it is consistent.

In my reading project, I am fortunate that learning and translation are processes that require keeping one's detailed work. The detailed work is partially redundant with the final reading. So I have two independent tables in my data that both contain the full text of the English.

One is the word by word glossary. It has the Hebrew consonants, my derivation of the stem, the corresponding English phrase for each Hebrew word in the text. So roughly 305,000 entries. This I developed over time to try to discover the way stems work in the Hebrew tongue. I am still at the beginning of this discovery.

The second full text is the verse by verse version. This contains the English text by book, chapter, and verse. It is a bit frightening to read the English alone now. During the project, I developed the English in a variety of ways, sometimes first as a sentence, and then working out the glossary. But eventually I developed a technique to generate the sentence from the glossary and adjust it to try to find its sense. (If it indeed does make sense - some verses in the Leningrad codex are missing words - but not many).

But this process evolved and adjustments happened over the 8 year scope of this project for a variety of reasons. Recently when reading the English I noted a fishy looking verse and made a mental (actually a PDF note on my phone) but before I remembered that I had made the note, I had corrected something else and overwritten the PDF. Bother! said Winnie-the-Pooh.

So I thought and thought - if only it was honey and not cheese. And I figured a way to give myself a headache by comparing the glossary with the sentences of the text. The odds are that if the letter count of the glossary is not equal to the letter count of the verse in its sentence form, there is some kind of problem.

So if you were wondering, that is what I am doing these days - a two week slogging fest to correct my estimated 2000 errors (the rate of discrepancy is about 10% - just like in programming). It is a precise focus with a well defined end. It won't catch all errors but it will catch a lot and allow the English to be read with slightly less fear.

I am astonished at some of the errors. Many are trivial - a mismatch of and's or's or helping verbs or prepositions. Some are spelling discrepancies in names. Some are duplicated prepositions arising particularly from expected construct forms. But some are words and phrases that appear to have come out of nowhere! These wild animals will be caught in my redundancy trap. The odds of making that same mistake twice are small since English lemma forms in the glossary are tested against the Hebrew stems for consistency within a table of rules that has been developed over the project. Curiously enough, some of the errors are from pasting almost identical verses from parallel passages! (Some programming errors come from laziness. Some from tiredness.)