52 



E. J. SEWELLj ESQ., OX TEE 



would not lead any man to give this meaning to the Greek 

 words O 'Afivbs rov 0eo{), it must be derived from a know- 

 ledge of the special circumstances in the history of the speaker 

 and his hearers which gave the words that meaning to their 

 minds. It is admitted that the full meaning of the name — 

 Lamb of God — cannot be conveyed without such knowledge, 

 but so to give the meaning is the business of the expositor, not 

 of the translator ; and accordingly the rule proposed would 

 exclude such a translation. 



On the other hand, the translation : — " Behold Him who is 

 the Lamb of God " — meets much if not all of the difficulty and 

 is quite admissible under the rule stated. For a knowledge of 

 Greek combined with ordinary intelligence would show that the 

 .speaker did not intend the assertion that the Person addressed 

 was in fact the actual young of a sheep, but that the name was 

 used metaphorically : that is a fact inherent in the original and 

 it is therefore permissible to convey it in a translation in the 

 manner specified, or in any other manner which is permitted by 

 the idiom of the language into which the translation is being 

 made. Many languages have special grammatical forms for 

 indicating that a word is used metaphorically. 



Another example may be found in a passage taken from the 

 46th Psalm : " Hope thou in God who is the health of my 

 countenance and my God." The phrase — health of my counten- 

 ance— is rhythmical and the ideas of countenance and health have 

 a superficial connection, so that many who read or hear the 

 phrase let it pass without any close consideration of its meaning. 

 But if we stop and ask ourselves what precisely the Psalmist 

 can be supposed to have meant by calling God — the health of 

 his countenance — we shall realize that the words hardly convey 

 to us any definite meaning. If, however, we turn to the recent 

 French translation known as the "Version Synodale," or to 

 Dr. Segond's translation, we find the phrase rendered — "II est 

 mon salut et mon Dieu" — and the translation is justified in this 

 way. The Hebrew word — my face — is said in the dictionaries 

 to mean also — my presence, my person — and therefore to be 

 equivalent to myself. The word translated — health — is almost 

 everywhere else, both in the A.Y. and the R.V., rendered 

 salvation, so that the health of my countenance becomes the 

 salvation of myself, i.e., my salvation. 



These are purely questions of language, and if the statements 

 as to the usage and meaning of the Hebrew words are correct, 

 the translation is, so far, fully justified under the proposed 

 principle. 



