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Exodus 22: 17 or 18

(18 in the KJV and the SRV, 17 in the Masoretic Hebrew text)

The entire sentence in Hebrew consists of 3 words:

Exodus 22, 17 or 18

The translation of each word is as follows:

hebrew word meaning sorcerer  =  sorcerer

hebrew word meaning no, not  = no, not

hebrew word meaning resurrection, revival  = resurrection, revival

What then is the best translation into English? The King James Version translates it as, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This fit King James' agenda. He believed that witches were "raising storms against his ships," as he wrote in Newes from Scotland (1592). He also wrote a tract called Daemonologie (1597), and was actively persecuting witches. so his prejudices are clear.

Moreover, several arguments can be made against his translation. There is no evidence that witches were known to the writers of Exodus. To them a sorcerer would likely have referred to a magician of the Egyptian court from which they had just escaped. Exodus 7: 11 refers to Pharaoh's "sorcerers," using the same word in Hebrew. There King James does not translate the Hebrew as "witches," probably because "Pharaoh's witches" would have been too obvious an anachronism.

Those ancient Egyptian priests practiced embalming, and legend suggests they claimed to be able to raise the dead, although they were forbidden to do so. Thus it makes sense that the writer of Exodus 22: 18 would have been refuting this claim. Hence we suggest, "A sorcerer cannot raise the dead," as a plausible translation.

However, the context of the line, coming in a series of lines listing punishments, suggests another translation, "A sorcerer shall not be resurrected." Which would imply that only Yahweh (Jehovah) had the power to resurrect, and the punishment for those who thought they could raise the dead, was that they themselves would not be resurrected. To combine the both senses, "A sorcerer cannot raise the dead, neither will he be raised from the dead by Jehovah."

Had the author of Exodus intended to say in this line that sorcerers were "not to live," other Hebrew constructions would have been less ambivalent. Instead of a word which means revival or resurrection, the author might have used the word for "live":

hebrew word meaning live hebrew word meaning no, not hebrew word meaning sorcerer

Or he might have used a construction which would translate as "kill a sorcerer":

hebrew word meaning kill hebrew word meaning sorcerer

Or he could have used words that meant, "condemn a sorcerer to death":

hebrew words meaning condemn to death hebrew word meaning sorcerer

Thus we see other constructions would clearly have had the meaning King James took, but those were not the constructions used in the Bible. The Latin Vulgate translation, "maleficos non patieris vivere" suggests the origin of the locution, "not suffer to live,"


maleficos = evil-doer
non= no, not
patieris= patience, forbearance
vivere= to live

Here "maleficios" suggests "evil-doer" rather than "sorcerer," which could be "sortiarius" in Latin. Thus it appears that of the several possible translations of this passage, King James' version is least accurate and most prejudiced, and yet the majority of extant biblical translations follow this lead.

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