Volume 22, Issue 5 (February 2, 2020)
“He Hates” or God Hates—The Text of Malachi 2:16
By Kyle Pope
Many Christians
have started using the formal equivalence translation published in 2001 by the
evangelical publisher Crossway, known as the English Standard Version. When
reading from this translation in the book of Malachi, the student of Scripture will
notice at once a reading dramatically different from that found in most other English
translations. Malachi 2:16 reads:
“For the man who hates and divorces, says the
Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of
hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not
be faithless.”
(ESV)
This stands in
contrast to most English translations which put God as the subject of the verb
“hate” rather than the man who divorces his wife because he “hates” her. Most
have rendered this in one of two ways: (1) As an indirect quote about God’s
attitude (“For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that He hateth putting away” KJV, cf. NKJV, CEB, GLT, ISV), or
(2) As a direct quote of God’s attitude (“For I hate putting away,
saith Jehovah” ASV, cf. RSV, NASB, NRSV, NET, NLT). Why do these translations
put this so differently? Why does the ESV make man the subject of the verb? And
which translation represents our best understanding of the original text?
The Hebrew Text
It is
clear that Malachi 2:13-17 is a rebuke of the faithless attitude Jews at the
close of the Old Testament period held toward marriage and divorce.
Unfortunately, the text of verse 16 poses a number of challenges both in terms
of translation and determination of the original text. The Hebrew Masoretic
text (the standard text preserved through a rigorous scribal process
represented in most Hebrew texts dating back to at least the eighth century
AD), has three words that form the opening phrase of the verse—ki sane’ shalach (כִּי שָׂנֵא
שָׁלַּח). The first word, ki is a conjunction that usually means
“because” but can also introduce a conditional phrase in the sense of our word
“if.” The third word is the infinitive form of the word meaning “to send away,”
used generally of any type of sending, and specifically of divorce (Deut.
22:19, 29; 24:1-4; Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:1, 8). An infinitive form is not bound to
a subject, but abstractly describes an action. Here it is not “he sends away”
(which would be a third-person singular verb) but simply “sending away”
(generally). An infinitive can be translated as a noun (e.g. “divorce” RSV,
NASB, NIV84, NKJV, NLT, NRSV, ESV) or abstractly (e.g. “putting away” KJV,
ASV, or “sending away” YLT, GLT).
The
major questions about translation rest on the second word in the verse. In the
Masoretic Text (MT) the word sane’ is in the third-person singular masculine
form of the word meaning “hate”—so it properly means “he hates.” We
should note that all of the translations mentioned above that put it “I
hate” acknowledge in their footnotes that the Hebrew reads “he hates.” The
problem is this seems to demand an unusual shift in the “he” that is being
addressed. The next phrase in the Hebrew reads literally, “says the Lord God
of Israel” (RSV, NASB, NIV84, NLT, NRSV, ESV, cf. KJV, NKJV, ASV, GLT). Is
Malachi quoting the Lord? If so, who is the “he” the Lord says “hates”? Is
Malachi summarizing the declaration of the Lord? We do this all the time—“He says that he hates onions!”—rather than, “He says, ‘I
hate onions!’” The next phrase raises further questions. The Hebrew speaks of “his
clothing.” About whose clothing is this speaking? If God hates and God
says, is this speaking of God’s clothing? If not, where is the shift?
In the face of this, many translators have concluded that something must have accidentally dropped out of the text in the course of scribal copying. A footnote in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), the foremost edition of the Hebrew MT, suggests that the second word is probably sane’ti (שָׂנֵאתִי), meaning “I hate.” If so two letters are missing from the text. A footnote in the NET Bible speculates that the first-person pronoun ’anoki (אָנֹכִי) “I” originally could have been the second word but accidentally dropped out in the course of scribal copying. If so, an entire four-letter word is missing from the text. All of the texts cited above that put this “I hate” rely in one form or another on the assumption that the text is incomplete. Is this the solution?
4QXIIa
Additional Ancient Evidence
When faced
with these kinds of dilemmas, translators and scholars often look to two
additional sources for clues to help resolve such questions: (1) Older
Biblical Manuscripts, and (2) Ancient Translations. In the case of this
text, while we have additional evidence from both of these types of sources,
unfortunately this evidence doesn’t resolve the mystery but actually
demonstrates a separate textual tradition.
Most
of us are familiar with the texts called the Dead Sea Scrolls. These biblical
and extra-biblical texts discovered in the caves near Qumran represent the
oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament ranging in age from ca.
200 BC to AD 70. In most cases their readings have confirmed the remarkable
reliability of the MT. In other cases, they reflect better readings or separate
traditions.
In cave four a fragment known as 4QXIIa (or 4Q Minor Prophetsa) was found containing portions of Malachi 2:10-3:24. Although the portion containing 2:16 is dark leather and badly damaged the opening words of the verse can be clearly seen. There are four words—but not reflective of a lost pronoun “I.” The Hebrew reads ki ’im santah shalach (כי אם שׂנתה שׁלח).
The
first and last words are the same as the MT, but the second word is the
conjunction ’im meaning “if.” It is attested
in Scripture in combinations with ki in
a conditional sense—“FOR IF (ki ’im) you
refuse to let them go” (Exod. 9:2) or “BUT If (ki
’im) you indeed obey His voice” (Exod.
23:22). The third word is a form attested nowhere else in Scripture. Like the
MT it is from the verb meaning “hate,” but scholars believe “the form שׂנתה may be read as the second masculine singular”
with an unusual ending, but one that is “well attested in documents at Qumran”
(Fuller, 55). If so, it would read, “For if you hate.” But how would the fourth
word fit in? In Hebrew the three letters used in the root meaning “send away”
could represent the infinitive “divorce” (or “sending away”), the imperative
“send away!”, or the masculine third-person singular “he sends away.” To
understand it in this last sense, we would have to supply the conjunction
“and.” This is how one translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls renders it—“For if you hate AND divorce” (Abegg, Dead Sea Scrolls Bible). This is essentially
what the ESV does, “For the man who hates AND divorces.” But there is no
conjunction “and” in the Hebrew text, and 4QXIIa has “For
if YOU hate [and] HE divorces” if we take it as a third-person masculine
singular.
So what if we treat it as an imperative? That
would put it, “For if you hate, divorce!” Rather than a prohibition or a
rebuke, that would almost treat this as a command to divorce. Interestingly
enough, that is exactly the way the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the
Old Testament done between the Old and New Testaments) rendered this—“If,
having hated, divorce! says the Lord the God of Israel, then iniquity will
cover his garments, says the Lord Almighty” (Fuller). Here the imperative
shows the negative consequences if one does divorce—iniquity covers his
garments. The ancient Aramaic translation known as the Targum of Jonathan
(probably composed in the second century AD) put this much the same way, “Because,
if you hate her, release her . . . and you shall not cover the sin with your
clothing” (Lier). The same is seen in the fourth-century Latin Vulgate,
which put it, “When you have hate, divorce! . . . However, he shall cover
his garments with iniquity” (Pope).
When
the Old Testament Scriptures were first brought into English Malachi 2:16 was
handled just as these early Greek, Aramaic, and Latin translations had. Using
the Latin Vulgate, Wycliffe (1395) put it, “When thou hatest
her, leave thou her (not)” as did Coverdale (1535)—“Yf thou hatest her, put her awaye,” and the Roman Catholic Rheims-Douay (1582)—“When
thou shalt hate her put her away.” Even when the Geneva Bible (1557) and
the Bishops’ Bible (1568) began to look to the Hebrew texts as their basis,
they still rendered this the same—“If thou hatest her,
put her away” (Geneva); “If thou hatest her,
put her away” (Bishops). The King James Version (1611) would break away
from the translation tradition that we now see stretching back to the Dead Sea
Scrolls, Septuagint, Jonathan Targum, and Latin Vulgate, and rely solely on the
Hebrew Masoretic Text to render this, “For the Lord the God of Israel saith,
that he hateth putting away.” Since then, all
subsequent translations have also leaned primarily on the MT (attempting in
some cases to create hypothetical reconstructions of texts nowhere attested in
the surviving manuscripts).
Which Translation Is Best?
So what can we conclude about which translation
best reflects the original text? At present, I don’t think we can determine
that. There are two strong and ancient ways the text has been preserved: (1) The
Masoretic Tradition (“Because He hates divorce”); and what I’ll call
(2) The Dead Sea Scrolls-Septuagint Tradition (“For if you hate,
divorce!”). The KJV, NKJV, GLT, CEB, and ISV best preserve the Masoretic
Tradition, with the Common English Bible reflecting it most literally in this passage.
Frankly, none of the modern English translations actually reflect the Dead Sea
Scrolls-Septuagint Tradition (although some try to create hybrids of both
approaches). Translations that render this “I hate” (ASV, RSV, AMP, GNB,
NASB, NIV84, NLT, NRSV) must do so on the presumption that something is missing
(even from 4QXIIa). That is a speculative conclusion. Translations
that render this “hates and divorces” (Abegg,
CSB, ESV, HCSB, NIV11) must mix pronouns (“you”—“he”),
insert pronouns not found in the text, and insert the conjunction “and” into
the text. The NIV is a curious example of trying to have it both ways. The
original edition put it, “I hate divorce” (NIV84), but the most recent
update now reads “The man who hates and divorces his wife” (NIV11). While
these translations may still convey the general tone of God’s rebuke of the
cruelty of divorce, they do not reflect the actual wording found in the
manuscripts of either tradition.
For Further Study
Abegg, Martin, Jr., Peter
Flint, and Eugene Ulrich. The Dead
Sea Scrolls Bible. New York: Harper
Collins, 1999.
Collins, John C. “The
(Intelligible) Masoretic Text of Malachi 2:16.” Presbyterion
20.1 (1994): 36-40.
Fuller, Russell.
“Text-Critical Problems in Malachi 2:10-16.” Journal of Biblical Literature 110.1
(1991): 47-57.
Lier, Gudrun
Elisabeth. “Translation Techniques in Targum Malachi: a
Comprehensive Analysis.” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 41.1 (2015):1-19.
