A little something you may not have known.....
Thousands of times in the Old Testament the KJV translators woodenly followed the Hebrew word order in a way that does not produce normal, idiomatic English. Did you ever notice, for example, how many verses (or sentences) in the KJV begin with the word “and”? Read Genesis 1, and note that with the single exception of verse 1, every verse of the chapter begins with “and”, a total of thirty times. Now compare the NIV. It reduces the number of occurrences of “and” to eleven, while at the same time improving the flow of the language so that it sounds more natural to the ear.
The NIV translators produced an improved translation by taking seriously the fact that the vast majority of prose sentences in Old Testament Hebrew begin with one of the two Hebrew forms for the word “and”. The word for “and” appears even when there is absolutely nothing preceding to which the sentence logically connects. In fact, six books of the Old Testament (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, Ezra, Ruth, and Esther) begin in Hebrew with the word “and”, though they obviously do not follow anything. Accordingly, it is now recognized by Hebrew grammarians that “and” at the beginning of a sentence is virtually the equivalent of the use of capitalization at the beginning of English sentences. This does not mean that the Hebrew “and” should never be translated by the English “and”; it simply means that “and” is only sometimes, and certainly not a majority of the time, the best translation in English. The simple English sentence beginning with a capital letter will do nicely in most cases.
Thousands of times in the Old Testament the KJV translators woodenly followed the Hebrew word order in a way that does not produce normal, idiomatic English. Did you ever notice, for example, how many verses (or sentences) in the KJV begin with the word “and”? Read Genesis 1, and note that with the single exception of verse 1, every verse of the chapter begins with “and”, a total of thirty times. Now compare the NIV. It reduces the number of occurrences of “and” to eleven, while at the same time improving the flow of the language so that it sounds more natural to the ear.
The NIV translators produced an improved translation by taking seriously the fact that the vast majority of prose sentences in Old Testament Hebrew begin with one of the two Hebrew forms for the word “and”. The word for “and” appears even when there is absolutely nothing preceding to which the sentence logically connects. In fact, six books of the Old Testament (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, Ezra, Ruth, and Esther) begin in Hebrew with the word “and”, though they obviously do not follow anything. Accordingly, it is now recognized by Hebrew grammarians that “and” at the beginning of a sentence is virtually the equivalent of the use of capitalization at the beginning of English sentences. This does not mean that the Hebrew “and” should never be translated by the English “and”; it simply means that “and” is only sometimes, and certainly not a majority of the time, the best translation in English. The simple English sentence beginning with a capital letter will do nicely in most cases.
