I am still editing video from my interviews with Matthew Dean and Chris Andrews, and I’m happy to announce that next week I’ll be interviewing my Hebrew professor, Michael Carasik, who left a helpful comment on my first try at Genesis 2:1-3. If you’re interested in Genesis, then I urge you to get a copy of his translation of The Commentator’s Bible / Miqra’ot Gadolot.
I’ll return to all these verses again after translating the full text, so please comment or email questions and feedback. But going forward I will translate new verses, rather than continue to work over these again and again. As tempting as that is.
For the final verses I stole the modern Protestant coinage sabbathed to translate שָׁבַת֙, shavat, which has the same root as שַׁבָּת, shabbat. (But fear not, I don’t expect to use disciple as a verb..!)
If the switching between God and He at the end seems clunky, I’m trying to follow the Hebrew, which switches between God as the stated subject and God as the implied subject. Because Hebrew verbs have gender and number, it’s not necessary to provide a pronoun; instead, they can have an implied subject, which comes through in English as a pronoun because our verbs only have number and so can’t stand alone in the same way.
God said, "Sea seething with creatures birds flying over Earth on Heaven's face" God built Large Leviathans All creatures seething from Sea by their kindred Every winged bird by its kindred He saw that was fine God blessed them God said, “Mate, multiply fill Seas cover Earth” An evening, a morning fifth day God said, “Earth make animals by their kindred walkers, wigglers earth beasts” God fashioned Earth beast Walker Every soil wiggler by their kindred He saw that was fine He said, “Man in our semblance Man like us Master of Sea beasts Sky birds Walkers and all Earth Wigglers crawling on Earth” God built Man in His semblance In God’s semblance He built him Male, female He made them God blessed them God said,"Mate, multiply Fill Earth Master Sea beasts Sky birds Every beast crawling on Earth” He said, “Look, I gave you every seeding crop on all Earth every fruit tree to eat also for earth beasts sky birds wigglers on earth with life every green crop to eat” He saw that was very fine An evening, a morning sixth day Heavens and Earth and their whole order finished God finished that seventh day the work He had done He sabbathed that seventh day from all work He had done God blessed the seventh day Consecrated it for He had sabbathed then from all work God had built for doing.
Maybe switch "multiply" and "mate" around? When God says, "Mate …" he sounds Australian.