5
Assuming the idiomatic, proportional meaning of
ypl
, the translator of the LXX may
have read, "and a man according to his praise."
12
He paused and asked himself, "A man
what according to his praise?" The answer he arrived at, in the context of the crucible, was
that a man is tested according to his praise. How so? Well, it seems proverbially insightful
to say that a man can be tested when he receives praise; such a notion is supported by the
antipathy toward flattery in Proverbs and other Scripture. The translator looked back at his
Vorlage and crafted the clause, "a man is tested through the mouth of his praisers." (The
apparatus of BHS suggests that the LXX may have understood
wyDlVlAhVm
, which is a piel plural
participle with a third-person masculine singular suffix, "his praisers.")
If my reconstruction of the "mental acts" of the author is anywhere near correct (C. S.
Lewis, E. D. Hirsch, and Bob Stein notwithstanding), there was also a confusion between the
idiomatic sense, whence the notion of "according to" (diať) in his translation, and the literal
sense, whence "the mouth of." I will address this in the critique, below.
The Syriac contains the same addition to the end of the verse as the LXX, implying
dependency or a common Vorlage. The Targum of Proverbs displays a dependency on the
Syriac throughout. Both express the passive voice by changing the preposition in the third
clause from lamed to min "from." The Vulgate reads, quomodo probatur in conflatorio
argentum et in fornace aurum sic probatur homo ore laudantis. "As silver is proven in a
melting-place and gold in a furnace, thus a man is proven by the mouth of praisers."
13
All of
these are either dependent on the LXX, dependent on a common Vorlage, or follow the same
logic in trying to make sense of the Hebrew.
14
Early English Translations:
Wycliffe translated from the Vulgate and demonstrates his dependence: "As siluer is
preuyd in a wellyng place, and gold is preued in a furneys; so a man is preued bi the mouth
of preyseris."
Tyndale translated from the Hebrew and Greek, but the Psalter and Proverbs were
from "Mathews" 1537 Bible compiled by John Rogers from the Miles Coverdale 1535 Bible.
It reads, "Silver is tried in the mould, and gold in the furnace, and so is a man, when he is
openly praised to his face." The translator attempted to translate
ypl
literally, which is
commendable (though
ypl
is "to the mouth"; "to his face" would be
wynpl
or
wynp_la
; see Dt
7:10), but he missed the three-part structure. Thus, he was forced to make sense out of "a
man, to the mouth, his praise." The translator rightly determined that there must be some
connection to the first two phrases, which have to do with testing, but in order to express the
connection, a great deal had to be added to the third phrase beyond what is literal to get to the
idea that a man is tested when he is praised to his face.
It is well known that the early tradition of English versions are very much dependent
on Tyndale/Rogers; many of the versions that followed were in reality revisions rather than
12
The New World Translation reads, "... and an individual is according to his praise." NJB reads, "... a person is worth
what his reputation is worth."
13
The Vulgate adheres closely to the word order of the Hebrew, yet it does not observe the three-part structure; like the
others it inverts the meaning in the last phrase. In conflatorio and in fornace, the equivalents to the words before the
lamed prefix in the first two phrases in Hebrew, are translated with the ablative case. But homo, the word before the
lamed in the last phrase, is translated in the nominative. Likewise argentum and aurum, the nouns after the lamed
prefix in the first two phrases, are translated with the nominative, but oro laudantis is translated with the ablative. To
be consistent, it should translate the third phrase, "thus the mouth of praisers is proven in a man."
14
Clifford writes in OTL (p. 29), "Frequently S finds the Hebrew text difficult, in which case it turns to G for help.
Ordinarily, S keeps an eye on G to check its own translation, just as T translates the Hebrew with an eye on S, and V
translates the Hebrew with an eye on G."