They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.” Ps. LXXIV. 7.

Whoever will consider, for a moment, the expression "defiled-to the ground," will perceive the propriety of some such addition as the words, "by casting down ;" and it will be allowed that it is creditable to the Text of 1611 to exhibit that addition duly pointed out. The misfortune, however, is, that in Ps. LXXXix. 39, where a similar addition is introduced, no trace of any addition is to be found. It was left for the edition of 1638 to give that text as follows:

"Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground."

Ainsworth thus translates Ps. cxviii. 5:

“Out of strait affliction I called on Jah; Jah answered me with a large room:"

and illustrates the expression, "with a large room," by stating, in the note, that it is equivalent to "bringing me into it ;" and refers to Ps. xviii. 19, where the sense is fully expressed :

"He brought me forth also into a large place."

Of all this our Translators were aware; and as the Press was in this instance duly attended to, we find the passage (Ps. cxviii. 5.) thus given in the Text of 1611:

"I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place."

We learn from Deut. xix. 11, 12 that, supposing a person from hatred to have slain his neighbour, and to have fled to a City of Refuge, the Elders of his city were to fetch him thence, and deliver him to the Avenger that he might die. In verse 13 we read, according to Ainsworth's literal rendering:

"Thine eye shall not spare him, and thou shalt put away innocent blood from Israel."

Whatever obscurity Ainsworth may leave in the text, he generally removes it in his note. What then is to be said of the command to put away innocent blood?..... Innocent blood is, as the Chaldee explaineth it, him that shed innocent blood." And so, to "put away innocent blood" may signify-to remove from the land the guilt of shedding innocent blood-or, more briefly, the guilt of innocent blood. In this light the matter appeared to our Translators, whose version of the passage is thus given in the Text of 1611:

“Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel."

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It may be observed that the object of the institutions here recorded is expressly stated (verse 10) to be—“ that innocent blood be not shed" in the land.

In Judges v. 30, we discover a remarkable attention to supplementary words, and to the distinction proper to them in the Text of 1611:

"Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey?— to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil."

The

Here, we first have "not" in Italics, under circumstances which have already (p. 22) been discussed. word "meet" is, in reality, supplied; and ought to have been in Italics, as we find it in the edition of 1638, as well as in the modern editions. Instead of "necks of the spoil" we have "necks of them that take the spoil :" —in the same manner as we read (2 Kings xvi. 9) that when the king of Assyria had taken Damascus, he

"carried the people of it captive to Kir;" and that, under certain circumstances, the priest is enjoined to

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pronounce him clean that hath the plague." (See pp. 9, 52.) All this indicates great attention to the idiom of the Hebrew Language.

In 2 Sam. v. 8, the Text of 1611 presents us with the following passage:

"And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain."

In this place, a very considerable addition is indicated by the mode of printing; and the context does not render much assistance towards supplying it. The words, however, were not inserted at random; for in 1 Chron. xi. 6, where the same event is recorded, we read, without any supplementary words,

"And David said, Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first, shall be chief and captain."

In this manner did our Translators make the Sacred Volume its own interpreter. There are, indeed, passages from the Old Testament, in great abundance, the discussion of which would shew how thoroughly the Translators were acquainted with the contents of Scripture; and, at the same time, tend to throw light upon the peculiar phraseology by which the Old Testament is distinguished. But it now seems expedient to pass on to another part of the subject;* and produce, from

* In a note, however, I may mention 2 Sam. xxiii. 8. “He lift up his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time;" as explained by 1 Chron. xi. 11. "He lift up his spear against three hundred, slain by him at one time:" the supplied words in Italics, in the former text, having been derived from the complete expression in the latter.

H

the Old Testament, a few instances of Italics which, although not found in the Text of 1611, were introduced into the edition of 1688, and thence into the modern editions.

In Gen. xxv. 23. after mention has been made of "two nations" and "two manner of people," who were to descend from Rebekah, it is added-if we translate according to the strictness of the letter

"people shall be stronger than people."

The purport of this was so certain, when taken with what preceded and what followed, and the necessity of supplementary words so manifest, that Ainsworth, though averse to additions when he could avoid them, presented the clause in this form:

"The one people shall be stronger than the other people." In the same terms was the clause expressed by our Translators; but in the Text of 1611, the same care was not taken by the Correctors of the Press, to mark the supplementary words. In that Text the entire clause appears in one uniform character; the inaccuracy being found rectified in 1638.

Of Gen. xLiv. 31. Ainsworth has given the following translation:

"Then will it be, when he seeth that the young man is not, that he will die."

Of the same passage, the version given by our Translators is thus printed in the Text of 1611:

"It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he shall die."

Now, by the former translation the real meaning of the passage is altered; and although by the latter

translation the meaning is secured, yet by the mode of printing much of the effect is lost. Let us see in what way something of this effect may be preserved. The Hebrew, in the verse preceding that which has been quoted, presents an expression, in its complete form, which influences the mind in the interpretation of an incomplete expression of the same kind in the verse under consideration; and it seems as if we could not more easily point out the connection, existing in the Original, between the two verses, than by properly applying Italics, or marks equivalent to Italics, to the Version given by our Translators.... The reader will bear in mind that Judah is representing to Joseph the distress of his father, supposing him to return without Benjamin.

"Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us (seeing that his life is bound up with the lad's life)

It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he shall die."

The reference, in the Original, of the word "not" in the latter verse, to the expression, "not with us," in the former, is very pleasing; and we have, as I have said, no better mode of indicating the like reference in the English text, than that of completing the phrase in the latter verse, by words in Italics. Thus the passage ought to have been printed in 1611, and thus it was printed in 1638. Ainsworth's note is again to the purpose:" is not, namely, with us, as the Chaldee addeth."

In Levit. xxiv. 11. Ainsworth translates thus: "And the Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name, and cursed."