Pronouns Strike Again

Proverbs 3:6 (KJV) In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

In reading the Septuagint I almost skipped over this part, but when I looked closely there was a difference.  Notice how this verse is translated,

Proverbs 3:6 (BES) In all thy ways acquaint thyself with her, that she may rightly direct thy paths.

Do you notice immediately the pronouns of “her” and “she”?  It is a definite difference in the translation.  I don’t know that it is part of the actual text in Hebrew.  I know that when I looked at the Hebrew, I couldn’t find any gender markings, but if you look back at the verses before it is definitely talking about God.  My first thought was that the translator may assume it was talking about wisdom, which is feminine.  But no, it is talking about God.  The issue is that in Greek the word for “ways” is a feminine noun and grammatically the pronoun agrees with the noun.  So legalistically “her” is correct in Greek but in translation it gives a devious understanding.

So keep in mind that when people talk about how the Bible sometimes refer to God as “she”, they may have been reading the Septuagint, or letting their imagination go with them like this translator.

So?  You can never stop thinking.  It just doesn’t work.