 There is a famous saying in Italian, and you'll excuse me if I don't pronounce it properly. I failed Italian in kindergarten. The expression is traditore, traditore. Traditore, traditore. Which literally means translator-traitor. Or more accurately, translating is betraying. When you translate, you are a betrayer. You're a trader. Now, sometimes when we translate from one language into another, it's quite innocent. It's quite innocent because it's simply an inescapable drawback of translating from any language into another. Any time you translate any language into another language, you are going to lose something in the translation. Translation by nature is not a perfect science. And so sometimes when we translate from one language into another, we simply lose something in the translation. We actually have that as an expression. It gets lost in the translation. I'll share with you three examples where this is fairly innocent and unavoidable. And the truth is, you can find any Jewish translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, get an art scroll, get whatever you want to get, a JPS, any even a Jewish translation of the Hebrew into the English, something will be lost in the translation. It's unavoidable. We just read last Shabbat about the story of Billim. The king of Moab, Balak, wanted to hire a Billim to go and curse the Jewish people. And so we find something very peculiar and curious. In Numbers chapter 22 verse 20, God says after the whole story gets started, you know, God tells Billim initially, look, you can't curse the Jewish people. They're a blessed people. But Billim obviously wants to go. And so finally in verse 20 of the chapter, God says to Billim, you can go. He says you can go with the people, with the messengers of the king of Moab. So God seems to give him permission. That's in verse 20 of chapter 22. And in verse 21, we're told that Billim goes with the messengers of Balak. But then in the very next verse, verse 22, God is furious with him for going. So you read this story and you wonder what in the world is going on. In one verse, God says you can go with them. The next verse says that Billim went with them. And the next verse says God is furious. So there are many approaches to this question. It's a very blatant obvious question. But one possible answer to the question gets lost in the translation. Because in Hebrew, there are two different words for with. We're told that Billim was given permission to go with them and he went with them. But one word for with is the Hebrew word et. And God actually gave him permission to go et with the messengers of the king of Moab. But when he actually goes with them, it doesn't say he went with them. It uses another word for with, which is the Hebrew word im. And that might be the solution to the problem. Because the word et to go et with them would simply mean that he's going to accompany them. You know, like when I go on a bus from here to New York, I'm sitting next to people. I'm with them. I'm going on the same bus. We could be going for many different reasons. I may not know the people at all. I may have nothing to contact with them and speak to them. We just happen to be on the same bus. I am with them et. But the word im in Hebrew implies of one mind. I'm going with them. I'm together with them. And that was the problem here. God gave him permission to go accompanying them et. But Billim went with them with one mind in. And that explains possibly why God was furious with them. The problem is if you're reading the Bible in English translation, all you're seeing is the word with. God says go with them and he went with them and God gets upset. It's impenetrable. Another example, which I like to quote in the book of Exodus chapter 10 verse 1. God says to Moses, Now, invariably, not all the time, but invariably, and I'll tell you in almost every single non-Jewish translation of this verse, is rendered go to Pharaoh. God says to Moses, go to Pharaoh. If anyone knows Hebrew, you know the word bow means come. So literally God is saying, come to Pharaoh. Now, anyone sitting down to translate the Bible, they're going to say, well, it doesn't read well because you don't say to someone, go come to Pharaoh. It sounds a little bit weird. And so the translator will often try to clear up what they feel to be a problem with the literal translation. And that's one of the major problems with translation. They're trying to do you a favor. They're saying, you know what, the text literally doesn't read well. And so we're going to smooth the surface for you. We're going to clear up the problem. And we're going to tell you that, well, when it says come to Pharaoh, God really means go to Pharaoh. And so this phrase, bow El-Paro is invariably translated as go to Pharaoh. But when you do that, you rob the Hebrew original of its richness. The original is very rich. Because again, to say that all God is saying to Moses is go to Pharaoh. It's missing a component of the literal Hebrew. When God says come to Pharaoh, what is God saying to Moses? He's saying, come, we're going to go together. I'm going to go with you. God is not simply sending Moses off on a mission. God is letting Moses know I'm going to be with you. We're going to be going together. And so God expresses that by saying to Moses, come to Pharaoh. We're going to go together. But again, that complexity is just absent when you read the English go to Pharaoh. You wouldn't realize that there's something else going on here. Another example of where the translator basically cheats you. Cheats you, not because they're insidious or they're trying to do something evil. They just can't avoid it. And here there are millions of examples. Psalm 16 begins by saying, Now, many of the Psalms begin by saying, or there's so many different ways the Psalms begin. is unusual. It only appears if I'm not mistaken in six Psalms here in Psalm 16. And then later on, I think from 80 to 85 or somewhere in the 80s, you have five more. But what in the world is a Mihtam? And there are about a dozen different theories as to what Mihtam is. It's either a musical instrument or it's a musical composition or it's a melody or it's a tune. There are at least 12 different approaches to what a Mihtam might be in the commentaries. The problem is the translator has to pick one of them. And so when the translator picks one of them, they might feel it's the best of the 12, but they're depriving you of all the other choices. They're basically clearing the decks of all the other possibilities and you don't realize that there are other possibilities because you were given what seems to be the translation. So those are three examples of where the translator innocently is just forced to deprive you of a clear understanding of what the original is. But sometimes translation is less innocent and Christian translations, because they want to spin a passage for polemical purposes, meaning they are trying to make a polemical point. They're trying to prove something. They will often distort the meaning of a verse for not such innocent reasons. And I'll share with you, I think, three examples. The most famous one is from the seventh chapter of Isaiah, verse 14, where Isaiah speaks about a young woman who will give birth. The Hebrew word is Alma, universally translated as a young girl, but in many Christian translations rendered as a virgin. Because again, the book of Matthew wants to prove that the Jewish scriptures predicted a virgin birth of the Messiah. So what happens is Matthew basically takes Isaiah and mistranslates Alma as virgin. It is very easy to prove this is a mistranslation. The simplest way of proving it is that almost all modern Christian translations and almost all modern Christian commentaries agree that it's a mistranslation. It's not rocket science. But that's one famous example of the translator being a traitor. Another interesting example is from the ninth chapter of Daniel. The ninth chapter of Daniel, verse 26, the verse speaks about Yikaret Mashiach. Mashiach will be cut off. Almost every single Christian translation will have this as the Messiah will be cut off, the Messiah. Now the problem here is that the Hebrew word doesn't have the definite article. The Hebrew word, Hebrew doesn't say Yikaret Ha Mashiach, it's not there. It just says Yikaret Mashiach, meaning an anointed one. An anointed one will be cut off, not the anointed one or the Messiah. The truth is in the Jewish Bible, there are many anointed ones. There are many messiahs. Every king was an anointed one. The high priests were anointed. Sometimes the prophets are called messiahs. So from a Jewish Biblical point of view, there are many anointed ones, many messiahs, and here Daniel speaks about a Mashiach, an anointed one, who will be cut off. But for the Christian mindset to them, there's only one messiah, only one anointed one. As a matter of fact, what happens in the Christian mindset is the Greek term for messiah, which is Christos, becomes Jesus's last name. So they don't think of it as Jesus Christ, meaning Jesus the Christ. They see Jesus Christ like Jesus Goldberg or Jesus Schwartz or Jesus Cohen. It becomes a last name as if there's only one messiah. So they take the Hebrew here in this passage, and they insert the definite article where it doesn't actually exist. They have the messiah will be cut off. Another example is in the book of Psalms, chapter 22, verse 17. In a Christian Bible, it's going to be verse 16. And the verse says as follows. That's the Hebrew. I'll translate it. Because dogs have surrounded me. A pack of evildoers have enclosed me. Like a lion at my hands and my feet. That's what the Hebrew is. Every single Christian translation has this as follows. For dogs have surrounded me. A pack of evildoers have enclosed me. But they render k'ariya, daivara, glai, as they pierced my hands and my feet. They pierced my hands and my feet. That for them is the crucifixion Psalm. Now how do we know that this translation is wrong? It's very simple. You know, usually it could turn out to be just an argument. Where the Christian says to the Jew, You know what, Mr. Jew? You are so terrified of seeing Jesus in this Psalm that you are forced to mistranslate it and say that it really means like a lion. By the way, just as an aside, even if it said they pierced my hands and my feet, it wouldn't prove anything about Jesus because the Romans crucified over 100,000 Jews. It wasn't as if he was the only person in history to have his hands and feet pierced. But that's a side point. The question is one of translation. So the Christian often comes to us and says, You know, you are so afraid of seeing Jesus, you mistranslate the verse to read like a lion at my hands and my feet. And we Jews would say to the Christian, et to Christian, you are so obsessed with seeing Jesus, you are driven to mistranslate it and read it as they pierced my hands and my feet. So you can have this back and forth argument. How do you resolve this dispute? Very simple. Go to the videotape, right? You can go to a concordance and look up the word kaare. It appears a number of times in the Bible. And you'll find it in the book of Isaiah, chapter 38, verse 13. You'll find it in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 22, verse 25. You'll find it in the book of Numbers, chapter 23, verse 24. And in the verse of Numbers, chapter 24, verse 9. Every single time this word kaare appears elter in the Bible, even Christians universally translate it as like a lion. Furthermore, where did this idea of a lion come from? I mean, the Christians seem to imply that we just invented this idea of a lion right in the middle of Psalm 22. The truth is, if you just go back three verses, it says right there in the same Psalm, they open their mouths against me like a tearing, roaring lion. And every Christian translates it like that. So lions appear throughout the book of Psalms earlier on in chapter 7, I think in chapter 12. Consistently, David writes about his enemies as personified as wild animals and as lions. So it's not as if in this Psalm, when David speaks about his hands and feet being attacked like a lion, that it's coming out of the blue. That's been consistent throughout the book of Psalms.