"He shall bruise your head"/"She shall crush thy head"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Quaere_Verum
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Q

Quaere_Verum

Guest
In reviewing the protoevangelium of the OT Gen. 3:15 I found the use of “he” in my RSV but “she” in my Douay-Rheims.

RSV
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Douay-Rheims
“I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and they seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”

I once heard that the word which was translated here can be used either way and suggests the closeness between Mary & Jesus - basically that they are inseparable &, thus, solidifies Mary’s part in salvation history.

What is your understanding here?
 
Yes the woman mentioned here is Mary. And Jesus & Mary are inseparable.
 
If I recall correctly, the original Hebrew Scriptures used the term that translates to “He”.

But the Greek translation (Septuagint), done before the time of Christ, used the term that translates to “She”. I mention this to show that there is no Christian bias in using the word “She”.
 
NotWorthy said:
If I recall correctly, the original Hebrew Scriptures used the term that translates to “He”.

But the Greek translation (Septuagint), done before the time of Christ, used the term that translates to “She”. I mention this to show that there is no Christian bias in using the word “She”.
Click to expand...
Interesting. But what do you mean by the “original” Hebrew scriptures? The Masoretic text? Also, my NKJV, which includes footnotes whenever there’s an alternate reading in another text (Septuagint, etc.) has no footnote for Gen 3:15 (it reads “He”). :confused:
 
Quaere_Verum said:
In reviewing the protoevangelium of the OT Gen. 3:15 I found the use of “he” in my RSV but “she” in my Douay-Rheims.

RSV
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Douay-Rheims
“I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and they seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”

I once heard that the word which was translated here can be used either way and suggests the closeness between Mary & Jesus - basically that they are inseparable &, thus, solidifies Mary’s part in salvation history.

What is your understanding here?
Click to expand...
Some say the Hebrew has “it” or even “they”; it’s the Greek that has “he”, and it’s only the Latin that has “she”. :confused:
 
Hang on can someone explain this with greater depth, cause I had no idea of that he/she thing between the different bibles.

Or point to a source?
 
Here’s the Douai-Rheims and the Vulgate versions, from New Advent:

3:15. I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.
Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius
She shall crush… Ipsa, the woman; so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, viz., the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head.

Does anybody know of an online version of the Septuagint?
 
The two 3rd-person singular pronouns in Hebrew are HuWA (normally “he/it,” pronounced like the English “who”) and HiYA (“she/it,” pronounced like the English “he”). (Consonants are capitalized, vowel points are lower case, and A stands for “aleph,” which used to be a glottal stop in Hebrew, but now is silent.) I said the the masculine HuWA is normally “he/it” because the authorities that I concult say that sometimes it is also used for “she.” There are places in the OT where that is true, but I don’t know off the top of my head where they are.

In this case, the pronoun is the masculine HuW’. There are two possibilities for the antecedent–“ZaR3aKHaa” (“thy seed,” referring to Satan; “3” stands for “ayin,” a consonant sound that doesn’t exist in European languages) and “ZaR3aaH” (“her seed,” referring to “the woman”). In both cases the word “ZeRa3,” “seed,” is masculine.

So we have a masculine antecedent and a pronoun that is normally masculine, but can be feminine in special circumstances. But there is another piece of evidence–the verb, “Y’SHuWPHKHa.” Semitic verbs carry markers for gender as well as person and number, and in this case the prefix “Y’” is uniquivocally masculine. And notice the “-KHa,”–that is “thy” in pronominal suffix form The Hebrew doesn’t say “…shall bruise thy head;” it says “shall-bruise-thee [all one word] head.” The corresponding phrase at the end of the verse is “T’SHuWPHeNuW 3aaQeeB,” “thou-shalt-bruise-it/him heel.” Again masculine, referring to “seed.”

I don’t know where the translation “she will bruise…” originally came from, but the grammar demands at least “it will bruise…,” speaking neutrally, or if we’re going to go ahead and talk about Christ as the fulfillment of this prophecy, “He will bruise…”

DaveBj (Language Geek)
 
What has anyone heard of this being evidence of the inseparability of Jesus and Mary and that this indicates the part Mary was to play in salvation history and her part in bringing sinners to Jesus? In other words, it doesn’t matter if the he or she translation is used because Mary’s role is only meant to bring souls to Christ and that Mary’s will is Christ’s/God’s will; it could never be anything else.
 
For those who have mentioned “it” as the Hebrew word, what do you believe would be the significance of a gender neutral pronoun or a nongender pronoun in this verse?
 
Quaere_Verum said:
For those who have mentioned “it” as the Hebrew word, what do you believe would be the significance of a gender neutral pronoun or a nongender pronoun in this verse?
Click to expand...
I believe the significance of gender neutrality vs. non-gender pronouns would be only in the mind of the translator: does he think that the pronoun refers to “seed,” in which case “it” would be appropriate, or does he think it refers personally to Jesus, in which case “He” would be appropriate.

Since Hebrew did not have a neuter gender, the question wouldn’t even have entered the mind of writers, editors, or readers of the Hebrew original.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top