Isa 6:3 and traditions in translation

[Kirk Lowery]

I ran across this verse a while back and was taken aback by how English translations tend to mistranslate this Hebrew text:

‎מְלֹ֥א כָל־הָאָ֖רֶץ כְּבוֹדֽוֹ׃

It is a simple verbless clause: two noun phrases appended together implying equivalency. Since ‎כְּבוֹדֽוֹ is the most definite (by morphology), I understand it as the subject. The other key fact is that ‎מְלֹ֥א is a masculine singular construct noun. Note: it is not a verb.

So how would one translate this verbless clause? In my opinion, it is straightforward: The fullness of all the earth (is) his glory. Or, following English word order: His glory (is) the fullness of all the earth.

But is that how the translations render it? No.

LXX: πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ the whole earth is full of his glory
ESV: the whole earth is full of his glory!
JPS: the whole earth is full of His glory.
KJV: the whole earth is full of his glory.
NET: His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!
NIV: the whole earth is full of his glory.
New Jerusalem: His glory fills the whole earth.

Talk about your groupthink! Are these translators and editorial committees paying any attention at all to the Hebrew? Robert Alter, however, in his new translation gets it right: The fullness of all the earth is His glory.

There is a significant difference in the meaning of the two translations. The traditional translation speaks of God's omnipresence and that anywhere one goes on earth, one sees God's glory. The correct translation is related, but the emphasis is very different. In this case, God's actions as creator ("the fullness of the whole earth") shows his glory. In other words, the text is speaking about God as Creator. A very different emphasis, which is suited better, in my opinion, to the context. But that is another discussion.

Another very interesting discussion is how this mistranslation come about in the first place. It is obviously an old interpretation, reflecting Jewish exegetical opinion in the Second Temple period. That's outside our charter, of course, but I think it is important to note how translations tend to track one another. Even mistakes are propagated.

Comments are welcome. Thank you for allowing me this rant!

[Jason Hare]

Why'd you leave out the Vulgate?

Vulgate: ... plena est omnis terra gloria eius. "... full is all earth with his glory."

In this case, the word gloria is in the ablative case for showing what it is filled with (the same as the genitive in Greek). The word plena is the predicate adjective and omnis terra is the subject.

I would totally read it as you do: "The fullness of all the earth is his glory." We might get to the meaning by swapping the noun phrases: "His glory is the fullness of all the earth." In other words, the earth itself is God's glory, since it bears his creative hand and what he has created "declares his glory" (as we see in Ps. 19 — הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם מְֽסַפְּרִ֥ים כְּבֽוֹד־אֵ֑ל).

Then again, perhaps we should read מְלֹא as a regular infinitive absolute. That is, filling all the earth is his glory.... That is probably what led to "his glory fills all the earth."

It's certainly something to pass back and forth in our thinking.

[Jason Hare]

These translations render it as if it were:

מְלֵאָה כָּל־הָאָ֫רֶץ בִּכְבוֹדוֹ

Or something similar.

[Kirk Lowery]

As for Latin, well..er...um...

I don't read Latin, so I couldn't say how it translates the Hebrew. During my grad school work, I focused on Semitic languages. In the years since, well, because of work I'm fluent in German and Hungarian. I've picked up a lot of words through the years, but no systematic study of it.

These translations render it as if it were:

מְלֵאָה כָּל־הָאָ֫רֶץ בִּכְבוֹדוֹ

Or something similar.

Ha! HALOT says of the occurrence in Isa 6:3: ''Rd מְלֵאָה". So, because the translations and versions do so, lets read that back into the Hebrew, even though there's no manuscript evidence for it and the text as it stands is perfectly understandable and fits the context!

[kwrandolph]

I ran across this verse a while back and was taken aback by how English translations tend to mistranslate this Hebrew text:

‎מְלֹ֥א כָל־הָאָ֖רֶץ כְּבוֹדֽוֹ׃

It is a simple verbless clause: two noun phrases appended together implying equivalency. Since ‎כְּבוֹדֽוֹ is the most definite (by morphology), I understand it as the subject. The other key fact is that ‎מְלֹ֥א is a masculine singular construct noun. Note: it is not a verb.

What grammatical and/or syntactical clues are there that underlie your claim that “it is not a verb.” ?

The practice of taking מלא as a verb, to go with כבוד as the masculine, singular subject, goes back long before the Masoretes and their points, therefore in order to back up your claim, you’ll need to refer to other than the Masoretic points.

What I notice as I read Tanakh is that the subject can come first, last or the middle of a sentence. The verb can come first, last or middle of a sentence, The same with the object. The order usually has more to do with what the speaker wanted to emphasize. Or, in poetry, artistic structure.

So how is your reading not going against not only tradition, but also the clear reading of the text?

Karl W. Randolph.

[talmid56]

Kirk כתב

Since ‎כְּבוֹדֽוֹ is the most definite (by morphology), I understand it as the subject.

Why is it more definite than הָאָ֖רֶץ, since the latter has the definite article?

[Jason Hare]

CHALOT has מְלֹא (also מְלוֹא and מְלוֹ) as a noun meaning "what fills, makes s.thg full; abundance, full number, multitude, extent." Davidson also classes it as a noun on its own merit, not a verbal form. There is no biblical Hebrew gerund for the piel of this root; modern Hebrew provides us with מִלּוּי.

[Jason Hare]

So, "the abundance of the whole earth is [God's] glory." We see God's glory in the fact that the world overflows with life and abundance.

Is this how you would read it, Kirk?

[Kirk Lowery]

Jason,

The context of the heavenly throne room in the presence of the Most High, with the continuous sound of "Holy!" resounding everywhere, seems to suggest that "fullness" should be understood in the broadest sense possible. "...the world overflows with life and abundance" certainly would be included, but I would interpret "fullness" as meaning everything God created in and on the earth, the earth itself, mountains, seas, weather, etc. The Himalayan mountains certainly add to God's glory, no?

[Kirk Lowery]

Dewayne,

First, an anecdote: when I was doing my grad work at UCLA, our major professor was Czech, Stanislav Segert. As he lectured, I immediately noticed that he would often omit a definite article where my native speaker intuition said it was necessary. But he "felt" definiteness differently than I did.

In general linguistics, "definiteness" is a feature that is present in all languages, but each language will "encode" definiteness differently. Hebrew, like English, has a definite article, but Hebrew, unlike English, does not have an indefinite article. (Well, some say Hebrew uses the numeral one for an indefinite article, but it certainly doesn't work the same way as English does!) For an introduction to these ideas see this Wikipedia article and the references found there. Note that many languages -- including Semitic languages -- use morphology and not just the definite article to indicate definiteness. It turns out that definiteness is not a binary "on/off" feature, but exists in a continuum, with noun phrases being comparatively more definite or less definite than other noun phrases.

In 1970, Francis Andersen proposed a hierarchy of relative definiteness in Biblical Hebrew based on morphology: F. I. Andersen, The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch (Journal of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 14; New York and Nashville, 1970). I wrote Anderson asking for more details on the data he used and the method that he used to come up with the hierarchy. He responded that it was only a hypothesis and hoped I or someone would take it further and test its reality. Years later I did just that: K. E. Lowery, "Relative Definiteness and the Verbless Clause", in Cynthia L. Miller, ed., The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Approaches (Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 251-272. Studying all the verbless clauses in Judges, I basically confirmed Andersen's hypothesis and hierarchy.

Definiteness is important in the interpretation of Hebrew verbless clauses in that it is crucial to determine which noun phrase is the subject and which is the predicate. Generally we just "feel" it, but our feelings are about which phrase is the more definite, since that is the basic definition of the subject. Andersen (and I) wanted to make the determination of subject and predicate more concrete -- dare I say more "objective"!

What follows is a list of Hebrew noun phrase types according to their morphological formation, beginning with the most definite to the least definite ("anarthrous" = without the article):

Pronoun
Proper noun
Construct noun + proper noun
Article + noun
Construct noun + article + noun
Article + participle
Article + numeral
Suffixed noun כְּבוֹדֽוֹ
Construct noun + suffixed noun
Anarthrous participial phrase
Anarthrous noun
Construct noun + anarthrous noun
Anarthrous numeral
Partitive (min + noun)
Infinitival phrase
Adverb
Prepositional phrase
Interrogative

The phrase מְלֹ֥א כָל־הָאָ֖רֶץ is "construct noun + construct noun + article = noun". While the last two words of the phrase would be higher in definteness if it stood alone, the addition of the second construct noun in front reduces its definiteness below that of the suffixed noun.

Whew! That is the background to my original comment as to which phrase is the subject. Much more could be (and has been!) said. Hope this was helpful at least in understanding my reading of the text.