Earlier this week, Mark Ward examined some criticisms of the King James Version via the preface to the Revised Standard Version. He mentioned dead words and āfalse friendsā as examples of how the English language has changed over 600 years. In this excerpt from his book, Authorized, Ward examines the case of a specific false friend: a word whose meaning has changed too subtly to notice.
I have come to realize through years of obsessive-compulsive love of English that the distance between my English and that of the KJV is mostly due to something over which I and the KJV translators have no control: language change. The reason I can write an entire book evaluating the English readability of the KJV and yet not say one negative word about the choices of the KJV translators is that I donāt blame them for failing to be prophets. Language changes in far more interesting and complicated ways than I understood as an eighteen-year-old KJV reader. No one can fully predict the future of the English language, even those whoālike the KJV translatorsāhelp shape that future.
But the biggest problem with KJV vocabulary is not actually the dead, obsolete words. When you run across emerod, you know you donāt know what it means, so you know when to pull out your dictionary. The biggest problem in understanding the KJV comes from āfalse friends,ā words that are still in common use but have changed meaning in ways that modern readers are highly unlikely to recognize. Many words and phrases in the KJV are still in use but meant different things in seventeenth-century Englandāand yet what they now mean makes sufficient sense in context that most readers donāt notice the change. They donāt realize they need to look these words up. Unicorn may be one example. Amidst a list of other animals, we might simply assume that the KJV translators meant by the word what we mean by it.
One day during my work as a Bible textbook author, I was writing about the funny, interesting, and powerful story of Elijah. I was writing in particular for eighth graders, and all of the sudden, after twenty-five years of being a Bible reader, I realized what the King James translators meant when Elijah says, āHow long halt ye between two opinions?ā (1 Kgs 18:21).
I always assumed that halt here meant āstoppingā between two opinions, and almost every other mature Christian Iāve spoken to (Iāve polled dozens) has said the same. People in the olden days used to say, āHalt!ā when they wanted others to stop, right? āHalt!ā medieval guards always said, āWho goes there?ā Riding your horse past a HALT sign was a ticketed offense in ye olden days.
I had read the Elijah story in other versions beforeālikely the NASB, the NIV, and the TNIV. The NASB has the people āhesitatingā between two opinions. The NIV has them āwavering.ā But the ESV provided the key that uncovered my lifelong misunderstanding.
To halt wasnāt just to āstopā in 1611; halt was the verb form of a word used in the KJV Gospels in the parable of the great banquet: āGo out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blindā (Luke 14:21). Halt in 1611 meant ālame.ā Instead of āhow long halt ye,ā we would say something like āhobbleā or ālimp.ā And thatās exactly what the ESV has: āHow long will you go limping between two different opinions?ā
More important, this is what the Hebrew text has too. The Hebrew word underlying ālimpingā is the one used to describe what happened to Mephibosheth when his nurse dropped him as a young child, leaving him lame (2 Sam 4:4). Interestingly, the word also occurs again within 1 Kings 18, and the ESV uses the same English word it used in verse 21, creating a sarcastically mocking picture: The prophets of Baal ālimped around the altar that they had madeā (v. 26). Elijahās challenge to the people in 1 Kings 18:21 is a picturesque metaphor. An obscure one, to be sure, because the next phrase is not as clear as ābetween two opinions.ā Itās literally something like āon two lopped-off boughsāāapparently crutches (this is the only time this word appears in the Old Testament). The whole phrase ādescribes a mind as wobbly and uncertain as the legs of someone lame.ā
But I missed all that for years because my Elizabethan English was not as good as I always assumed it was.
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Do you think you can recognize more of these false friends? Test yourself with this KJV Quiz.
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