The Original Bible: The Only True Version 

Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim

The original Bible, God gave to Moses and 2 million Jews upon Mount Sinai 3338 years ago. It was written in ancient Hebrew. Bible law demands painstaking accuracy when writing new Bibles so not a letter is missing. That ancient language is vital to accurately deliver all God’s messages, explaining why God formulated that language. But there are also “methods” to deciphering God’s cryptic and deeper messages within the text. God’s messages are not simply textual, but God also hints to deeper ideas through juxtaposition, metaphor, categories, repetition, interruption, anomalies, and intimation. Many priceless lessons are lost in Bible translations. I will share two examples from the Bible sections recently read in Temple on Sabbath.

And the magicians were not able to stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians and the Egyptian people (Exod. 9:11).

As the plague of boils do not affect one’s posture—they do not harm one’s skeleton or muscles—we wonder why the magicians could not “stand” before Moses. Furthermore, the fact that the boils were on the Egyptian people has no relationship to the magicians confronting Moses. Why then are we told that the magicians’ inability to stand before Moses was related to the rest of the Egyptian population having boils?

With these questions we now appreciate God's underlying message. The magicians had no problem standing upright. But “standing” here it means they had a problem “presenting” themselves before Moses; they lost dignity. Because what is the claim of the magicians? It is that they can produce magical feats. Yet, they could not remove the boils from their own bodies! Therefore they could not “stand” before Moses refers not to posture, but to dignity. And the end of the verse explains because now the boils were on them and the rest of the Egyptian population, equating the magicians to the normal population, exposing their inability to do magic…just like the common man. God exposed them as charlatans.The purpose of the plagues was to refute any claim of power other than God. God refuted idols, as well as the magicians. 

But if a translation corrupted the words “stand before Moses” to “arrive before Moses” this forfeits a crucial lesson. Or if a translator decided that the boils “on the rest of Egypt” was not crucial and omitted it, again God’s lesson is lost. The original Hebrew is crucial, as is the exact structure of each verse. 

Another lesson:

If you refuse to send my people, behold I will bring tomorrow locusts into your borders. And the locusts will cover the view of the land and you will not be able to see the land, and they will eat the remnants that were left over for you from the hail and they will eat every tree that sprouts for you from the field (Exod. 10:4,5). 

As God desired that all vegetation was destroyed, why did He not do so with a single plague of hail? And why is the second plague after hail not also meteorological, but this time it's from the animal kingdom, namely the locusts? 

Framing the question this way points to the answer. As we keep in mind that God's objective of the plagues was to refute claims of any power other than Him, with two plagues having a shared plan (destroying vegetation) we appreciate some higher power orchestrating hail and locusts to execute the same plan. Arranging both meteorology and the animal kingdom to destroy crops, indicates a power behind all corners of the universe that controls them. It teaches there is one power behind all that exists. God alone controls the heavens and the Earth, rejecting Egypt’s idolatry.

But if a translation omitted the word “remnant” we would again lose the primary lesson. 

These examples start to uncover a small glimpse into God’s brilliance, how He teaches man in His actions, and in His precise writing of His Bible, His Torah.