NLTSB on Genesis 3:14

Rick Mansfield has some suggestions for a game plan to ensure that NLT will be used by casual and serious students of the Bible into the future (more on those suggestions at the conclusion of this post). NLT is now described by the publisher as “the standard in scholarly translation with rich, clear language.” It is, I would suggest, no such thing.

Take NLT Gen 3:14. Even with the annotation provided in NLTSB, NLT Gen 3:14 cannot be used as a stand-alone point of entry into the text by those who wish to situate it within its larger biblical context. NLT Gen 3:14 radically departs from the diction of the original such that the verse’s inner connection with Isaiah 65:25 is severed, and its looser connection with Isa 49:23; Mic 7:17; and Ps 72:9 obscured. NLT Gen 3:14 erases the diction of the original so thoroughly that it is also unusable as a gateway into the history of its reception in theology, literature, hymnody, and other cultural media.

Genesis 3:14 reads as follows in Hebrew and in translation:

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶל־הַנָּחָשׁ

כִּי עָשִׂיתָ זֹּאת

אָרוּר אַתָּה

מִכָּל־הַבְּהֵמָה

וּמִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה

עַל־גְּחֹנְךָ תֵלֵךְ

וְעָפָר תֹּאכַל

כָּל־יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ

יהוה God said to the serpent,

“Because you did this,

Cursed are you

more than all cattle

and more than all wild animals:

on your belly you shall go,

and dust you shall eat

all the days of your life.”

NLT Gen 3:14 reads as follows:

Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

Because you have done this, you are cursed

   more than all animals, domestic and wild.

You will crawl on your belly,

   groveling in the dust as long as you shall live.

NLTSB has a helpful system of cross-references of the kind that were once standard in English language Study Bibles, and still are in study Bibles in other languages (German, French, Italian, and Spanish, and so on). It is a miserable fact that, whereas NLTSB and ESVSB contain cross-references, they are not included, beyond those found in the notes, in e.g., the Jewish Study Bible, The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, and the HarperCollins Study Bible. To be sure, cross-references that are phrase-specific rather than, say, pericope-specific or verse-specific, are best indicated as such and concisely commented on. In the margin, at Gen 3:14 NLTSB cross-references Deut 28:15 and Isa 65:25; in the notes, Gen 3:17, Ps 72:9, and Mic 7:17. If it were up to me, I would combine notes and key cross-references at Gen 3:14 as follows:

Because you [did what you did]. . . cursed . . .: you shall eat [dirt]. . . all the days of your life: so also Gen 3:17. In the larger structure of the passage, the ’arura (cursing) of ha’adama (the ground) and the punishment of ha’adam (the man) in 3:17 complement the ’arur (cursing) of ha-naḥaš (the serpent). Both serpent and man must henceforth abjectly eat dust / dirt all the days of their lives. On the other hand, as a result of the couple's disobedience the man and the woman and their future seed are punished but not, as might have been expected, cursed. The couple and their progeny's destiny is determined by the penalties God imposes but also by God's benevolence: they will henceforth strive with the serpent (understood literally and figuratively) and the ground on which he crawls (3:15-19), but the serpent will not be able to do more than strike at the heel, and human kind will be able to make a living from the ground.

Cursed [’arur mi-] . . . of all wild animals -> the most nakedly cunning [‛arum mi-] of all wild animals Gen 3:1. The serpent’s great responsibility corresponds to his great ability.

Cattle, a disjoint set with respect to wild animals (lit. creatures of the open field) -> cattle and wild animals Gen 1:24-25⁺. Living creatures or creatures is the umbrella category Gen 1:24; Lev 11:2. On your belly you shall go -> whatever goes on its belly Lev 11:42 = the class of slithering creatures (a subclass of swarmers that swarm on the earth Lev 11:44, a subclass of creatures Lev 11:2) = dust crawlers Deut 32:24; land slitherers Mic 7:17. For livestock large and small and beasts [=cattle above] of the open field as complementary classes, with human kind over all living creatures (Gen 1:28)- though not without conflict, as this passage demonstrates - see What is mortal man / that you mind him, // children of dust / that you note them? // You made him lack little of deity, / with glory and honor you adorn him. // You give him reign over your hands’ work, / you set all / beneath his feet. All livestock large and small, beasts of the open field, fowl of heaven, fish of the sea, passing over the paths of the sea Psalm 8:5-8.

Dust you [the serpent] shall eat Isa 65:25 [even in the new age] ≈ lick dust Mic 7:17 [like a serpent, of the sovereign God’s vanquished enemies]; Ps 72:9 [of the king’s enemies]; Isa 49:23 [of kings and queens, from the feet of Zion under the figure of a bereaved woman to whom children have been returned]. In each instance, God is the one who reverses reversal, and brings resourceful and powerful enemies low. With the God-driven fall of the serpent to a position at the feet of human kind, salvation-history begins. Like sin in Gen 4:7, the serpent is an in-between figure who inhabits the “ductwork” connecting human beings with God and who battles for control, but you shall strike his head (3:15) and you shall rule over him (4:7).

In the new heavens and new earth of the prophecy of Isa 65-66, God reverses every reversal except that to which the serpent is subject, who will continue to eat dust (65:25). As in Isa 11:1-9, the sense may be wholly figurative, with the animals representing human types.

Would that be overkill for a study Bible? Perhaps. In any case, NLTSB’s note to Gen 3:14 is frustrating for a variety of reasons. Here it is:

3:14 to the serpent: Though later revelation identifies the deceiver as Satan, it is the created animal who was cursed, like the ground (3:17). • Groveling in the dust is a posture of humiliation and defeat (Ps 72:9; Mic 7:17).

The first half of the note makes it sound as if the serpent is either the in-between figure who is cursed, or the created animal. Traditional exegesis, however, thought of this as both / and, and, quite plausibly, so did the author of Gen 3. It isn’t possible to understand Milton’s Paradise Lost or the history of reception of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity in which the figure of Satan was "filled in" based on the biblical witness, extrabiblical sources, and existential experience, without a sense of this both / and.

Furthermore, I’m not sure how it can go unmentioned that Isa 65:25, in the context of foreseeing a new heavens and a new earth, nevertheless foresees that the serpent’s punishment will be eternal. NLT Isa 65:25 reads as follows:

The wolf and the lamb will feed together.

The lion will eat hay like a cow.

But the snakes will eat dust.

The short little sentence “But the snakes will eat dust” may be the new standard of scholarly translation, rich and clear, but it still grates on my ear. See below for a translation that seeks to maintain long-distance concordance with Gen 3 and Isa 11. At least NLT Isa 65:25 retains the dust-eating part, a deliberate tie-in with Gen 3:14. There is one small problem. NLT Gen 3:14 does not mention “snakes” who will “eat dust.” It has a “serpent” “groveling in the dust.” The overly dynamic equivalents used across Gen 3:14 and Isa 65:25 erase the metalepsis [assumption of diction and tropes] of Gen 3:14 by Isa 65:25.

Here is the Hebrew of Isa 65:25-26 and a translation:

זְאֵב וְטָלֶה

יִרְעוּ כְאֶחָד

וְאַרְיֵה כַּבָּקָר

יֹאכַל תֶּבֶן      

וְנָחָשׁ עָפָר לַחְמוֹ

לֹא יָרֵעוּ

וְלֹא  יַשְׁחִיתוּ

בְּכָל־הַר קָדְשִׁי

 אָמַר יְהוָה

The wolf and the lamb,

      they will graze together;

the lion like the ox,

      he will eat straw;

            the serpent, whose food is dust –

they will not hurt

      and they will not destroy

in all my holy mount,

       said יהוה.

This is how I see it. “Eat dust” and “lick dust” are not interchangeable with each other nor with “grovel in the dust.” They are related expressions, and each requires some explanation and thought to understand from our point of view, in a culture at several removes from the one the expressions are at home in. For that very reason, it wreaks havoc with Scripture to replace “eat dust” in Gen 3:14 with “grovel in the dust.” It makes no sense to replace “the serpent whose food is dust” in Isa 65:25 with “but the snakes will eat dust” unless the latter ties in with a translation of Gen 3:14 which has “snake” instead of “serpent” and “eat dust” instead of “grovel in the dust.” But in NLT, there is no such translation to tie in to.

NLT Isa 49:23 has “They will bow to the earth before you / and lick the dust from your feet.” Not too shabby, but if “lick the dust” gets past the field-testers in this instance, why not in Ps 72:9, which ought to read something like “Desert nomads will bow down before him; / his enemies will lick the dust”? Instead, NLT has “his enemies will fall before him in the dust.” The tie-in with the other passages is thereby obscured.

Once again, if “lick the dust” gets past the field-testers in Isa 49:23, why not “They will lick the dust like a serpent / like slitherers on land” in Mic 7:17? Instead, NLT has the abbreviated and wildly dynamic “like snakes crawling from their holes.”  Is it all right to subtract from Scripture in this way via dynamic equivalence? Is it all the right to erase the connection between related passages by the same means? I would think not.

NLTSB is not suited to be the study Bible of an intro to OT course. The texture of the source text is inadequately presented in translation. The cross-references and notes provided are a good start, but their usefulness is limited precisely because the NLT lacks internal concordance and is often unnecessarily free in its representation of the sense of the Hebrew.

In other words, I disagree with Rick. NLT the translation needs a comprehensive overhaul if it is ever going to be useful for doing a close reading of the Old Testament unless by OT one does not mean the whole and the connection between its parts, but only the basic sense of whatever individual passage one is working on in a given moment.

The question naturally arises: is there a Study Bible on the market that passes muster in the opinion of this reviewer? That’s easy.

No. But ESVSB is a better candidate on principle because ESV as a translation does a far better job of preserving internal concordance and preserving the diction of the source text.

Comments

[Jim Getz]

While I definitely concur that the NLT doesn't for the kind of reading your talking about, I got a different sense from Rick's post.

He is contrasting the NLT with the NIV. If those are the two choices given to me, I'd definitely take the NLT.

[JohnFH]

Hi Jim,

I'm not so sure. The NLTSB is a far better product than the classic NIV Study Bible from many points of view. But an NIV Study Bible has a signal advantage over NLTSB for serious Bible studyz: NIV as a translation preserves internal concordance far more than does NLT.

In particular, in terms of ancient Hebrew poetry, NIV does a far better job of being stylistically faithful to the original.

[AlaBill]

John,

I have been following your blog for quite some time and this post points out one thing to a layperson like me; without a knowledge of Hebrew I am limited in my ability to understand and comprehend the original text as it was intended to be understood.

Take your Gen 3:14 translation...

God said to the serpent,

“Because you did this,

Cursed are you

more than all cattle

and more than all wild animals:

on your belly you shall go,

and dust you shall eat

all the days of your life.”

There is a rhythm and poetic nature to the verse when translated this way that I just do not get from any of my translations.

Now here is a question, At 61 is it too late to learn Hebrew to the extent that I could read and understand the original text in a somewhat similar manner?

Thanks a whole bunch for your efforts on this blog. I don't comment often, but I do read all your posts.

[Jim Getz]

John,

I don't think either the NLT or the NIV do a good job of preserving internal concordance.

Perhaps the NIV does a better job from passage to passage (like your examples above).

However, if the same Hebrew (or Greek) word appears repeatedly in the same pericope, there's a tendency to use synonyms rather than use the same English word repeatedly. It's a stylistic choice that drives me nuts.

So as not to rag on the NIV entirely, I do think it does a better job with poetry than the NLT, even though that was the major concern in the revised edition.

[JohnFH]

AlaBill,

If you find yourself a good flesh-and-blood Hebrew teacher, whatever you learn will be valuable.

Jim,

I think you're right. Freer translations in general, including NIV, rarely reckon with what is lost when internal concordance is no longer pursued as a goal. Essentially literal translations tend to succeed better in this regard.