CHAPTER 17
Exaltation and Beauty
When Reading Love Poetry
Love poetry through the centuries has been the very touchstone of exalted speech. It therefore provides a good test case for whether or not a translation has retained the exaltation of the original text of the Bible. Here is a specimen passage from the Song of Solomon (1:15-16):
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair. . . .
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant. (KJV)
What is the effect? We are transported to a world of heightened love and exalted rhetoric, far transcending ordinary lovers’ ardor and powers of expression. It is always this way with love poetry. In the quoted passage, though, the transport carries the price tag of archaic language. In the same tradition we read this updated version:
Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful. . . .
Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful. (ESV)
Something has been lost, but the passage retains a quality of exaltation. We know that we are not overhearing the couple next door. And if we have lost a little of the affective power of the King James, we have gained in accuracy and clarity. We lose virtually everything in the following version:
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! . . .
How handsome you are, my lover, Oh, how charming! (NIV)
Put beside the exaltation and eloquence of the King James tradition, it is hard not to read these lines without a touch of sarcasm and mockery. The rhetoric is that of everyday compliment. There is nothing wrong with everyday compliment, but love poetry trades in extraordinary compliment. Bad as the foregoing translation is, it does not bottom out on the scale. The following probably does:
My darling, you are lovely, so very lovely. . . . (CEV)
Is that how love poets speak? No; it is how ordinary people speak in prose.
When Reading Proverbs
With the proverb or saying, the ground rules change. A proverb is not exalted in style but instead represents the simple as a form of beauty. We need to remember that there is a simplicity that diminishes but also a simplicity that enlarges.
A proverb has an aphoristic quality that is the opposite of the prosaic. It announces upon its very appearance that it is an extraordinary use of language. Its resources include tightness of syntax, occasional inversion of normal word order, conciseness, occasional archaism, and relatively frequent use of imagery and figurative language. Proverbs have arresting strangeness and do not sound like everyday conversation.
Like rhythm, this aphoristic quality is discernible at once to any ear trained for it. As with rhythm, I entertain the possibility that many contemporary Americans have grown so accustomed to the prosaic that they have lost the ability to recognize the aphoristic sparkle when they hear it. Of course, modern Bible translations have often helped dull the perception.
One of my classroom assignments is to assign students to find and then share in class a biblical proverb that expresses a key insight of a work like Homer’s Odyssey or Dickens’s Great Expectations. I remember how shell-shocked I was the first time a generation raised on contemporary translations started reading their selections. Things simply did not sound right. I could hardly believe that people were reading proverbs.
To illustrate, just compare alternate versions of the same biblical proverb (Ecclesiastes 10:18):
Through sloth the roof sinks in,
and through indolence the house leaks. (RSV, ESV, NRSV)If a man is lazy, the rafters sag;
if his hands are idle, the house leaks. (NIV)If the owner is negligent the rafters collapse, and if his hands are idle the house leaks. (REB)
Some people are too lazy to fix a leaky roof—then the house falls in. (CEV)
Owing to neglect the rooftree gives way;
for want of care the house lets in the rain. (Jerusalem)A shiftless man lives in a tumbledown shack;
A lazy woman ends up with a leaky roof. (The Message)
It does not take the proverbial rocket scientist to differentiate the aphoristic from the prosaic. Here are variants of Proverbs 27:6, on the subject of whose words one can trust:
Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (RSV, ESV; NASB similar)Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. (NIV)
The blows a friend gives are well meant,
but the kisses of an enemy are perfidious. (REB)Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. (NLT)
A friend means well, even when he hurts you. But when an enemy puts his arm around
your shoulder—watch out! (GNB)
When the Victorian poet Francis Thompson, writing about “books that have influenced me,” praised the Bible’s aphoristic quality as the thing that took the “firmest hold” on him, he was fortunate that the King James Bible was the Bible of the English-speaking world of his day.
If Thompson were living today, his contact with the Bible might be in the prosaic tradition that has replaced the aphoristic flair of the King James tradition with tepid expository prose.
The aphoristic bent of the Bible is not limited to the wisdom books but is sprinkled even through the narrative parts.
Jesus’ resolve to go to Jerusalem to face his passion and execution is memorably captured in Luke’s formulation, “His face was set toward Jerusalem” (ESV). The sense of resolve is lost in translations that tell us simply that Jesus “was heading for Jerusalem” (NIV) or that “he was on his way to Jerusalem” (GNB, CEV).
A Pauline aphorism will yield a final example. The KJV rendition of 1 Timothy 6:6 is matchless: “But godliness with contentment is great gain” (NIV identical). Modern translations would have done well to stay with this great proverb, but generally they did not: “but godliness actually is a means of great gain, when accompanied by contentment” (NASB); “well, religion does make a person very rich, if he is satisfied with what he has” (GNB); “now there is great gain in godliness with contentment” (ESV); “yet true religion with contentment is great wealth” (NLT); “and of course religion does yield high dividends, but only to those who are content with what they have” (REB).