JU11-16: How Bible Translators Cherry-pick Words To Promote Their Doctrinal Agendas

“After two months she returned to her father, and he did with her what he had vowed; she had remained a virgin. So it became a law in Israel that the women of Israel would go every year for four days to lament the daughter of Yiftach from Gil‘ad.”-Judges 11:39-40

I wanna show you a perfect example of how Bible translators will use certain words to force interpretations that ain’t necessarily in the original Hebrew.

Take a look at verse 40 of chapter 11 where it says…”the women of Israel would go every year for four days to lament the daughter of Yiftach from Gil‘ad”.

Okay, so let me just be blunt and say it.

To use the word “lament” here is a mistake.

The original Hebrew is תָּנָה or TANAH.

And it does NOT mean “to lament”.

Instead it means “to recount” or “to tell” (as in a story).

And actually, later on before the Scriptures were written down and became a book, there was a group of men who were called TANNAS.

These men served as human libraries since it was their job to memorize the details of certain events and traditions and transmit them accurately to future generations.

So I think it’s obvious the translators of our English Bibles were engaged in a bit of devious strategizing when they decided to use the word “lament” here.

They wanted to paint this sad and tragic picture of what happened to Yiftach’s daughter.

There’s only one problem.

There’s no gloomy or depressing connotation attached to the word TANAH.

It’s neutral and simply means to recount or retell a story 

We can’t know whether the story being told is happy or tragic.

In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say “the women of Israel would go every year for four days to PRAISE the daughter of Yiftach from Gil‘ad”.

Why?

Because contextually speaking, that’s what’s happening.

The women of Israel are recounting the story of Yiftach’s daughter and her sacrifice with great admiration.

So in a sense, they’re really praising her here.

I’m done.