We find, however, that the Jews whom this double-dyed villain had consigned to extinction are no evildoers; on the contrary, they order their lives by the most just of laws and are children of the living God, the Most High and Most Mighty, who for us as for our ancestors has maintained the kingdom in excellent order. (REB: Esther 16:15-16)

In my recent reading of 1/2 Maccabees, I’ve run across the idiom again in the description of Nicanor, commander of Demetrius’ army and bitter enemy of Israel:

Thus Nicanor, that double-dyed villain who had brought along the thousand traders to buy the Jewish captives, was with the Lord’s help humiliated by the very people whom he had dismissed as of no consequence. (REB: 2 Maccabees 8:34-35)

And again:

The double-dyed villain retorted, “Is there some ruler in the sky who has ordered the sabbath-day observance?” (REB: 2 Maccabees 15:3)

Interestingly, the NEB also uses the “double-dyed” idiom variant in Maccabees rather than the more hyperbolic “triple-dyed villain” language that was used in Esther. So of the six instances found so far between the NEB and REB, only the NEB passage in Esther uses “triple-dyed”.

That said, while the Jerusalem Bible and New Jerusalem Bible use “archscoundrel” in the passage from Esther, they *do* translate “triple-dyed scoundrel” in both passages from 2 Maccabees.

The complete Jerusalem Bible was first published in 1966; that of the NEB in 1970. It is well established that the initial work on the NEB Apocrypha was dissolved and the project restarted under the guidance of Professor W.D. McHardy, who also led the work on the NEB OT (cf. About the New English Bible by Geoffrey Hunt). Is it possible that there was literary influence from the Jerusalem Bible project into the later phase of the NEB Apocrypha?

I must also comment that I’ve just noticed one of the members of the NEB Apocrypha Panel under McHardy and a translator of such was William Barclay, one of my favorite theological writers - my affection for the NEB just went up another notch or two!

There’s really no conclusive point to this post other than noting a few more instances of this idiom, plus the Jerusalem Bible variant. I just like blowing the dust off literary phrases that we don’t hear today!

3.1: Serpent: an ancient extrabiblical story tells how a serpent stole the plant which would have given immortality to human beings. It was believed that when the snake shed its skin, it was rejuvenated. Cunning: there is a pun in the Heb. words for cunning and naked (v.7). Had made: a phrase deliberately used to show that the serpent was only one among God’s many creatures. The idea of the serpent as a primeval adversary of God, indeed, the Devil, arose much later (see Wisd. 2.24); so too the fixing of blame on the woman arose at a much later time (Ecclus. 25.24).

A virtually identical footnote appears in the NEB Study Bible, though with “crafty” instead of “cunning”, as that earlier translation has it. The verses in question are:

The serpent, which was the most cunning of all the creatures the Lord God had made, asked the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’ (3:1)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (3:7)

Leon Kass’ book, “The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis“, contains the following note on this text:

The word “cunning,” in Hebrew ‘arum, echoes and puns on ‘arumim, “naked,” [...] The root sense of ‘erum, “naked,” is “smooth”: someone who is naked is hairless, clothesless, smooth of skin. But as the pun suggests, someone who is clever is also smooth, a facile thinker and talker whose surface speech is beguiling and flawless, hiding well his rough ulteriour purposes. (p.82)

With this in mind, we might think about how a “Literary Equivalent” English translation might convey a sense of this linguistic relationship in the original Hebrew:

The serpent was the smoothest operator of all the creatures the Lord God had made. He asked the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’ (3:1)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that their naked skin was smooth; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (3:7)

Now obviously “smooth operator” is a very constrained idiom or phrase to use in terms of its historical relevance and one must fight the temptation to begin humming Sade’s song of the same name, but the desired effect is there, drawing the connection between the cunning deceitfulness of the serpent and the nascent self-awareness of the sinful man and woman.

When they ask you why you are groaning, say to them, ‘I groan at the thing I have heard; when it comes, all hearts melt, all courage fails, all hands fall limp, all men’s knees run with urine. It is coming. It is here.’ This is the very word of the Lord God.

The same expression appears in Ezekiel 7.17, where the NET has this translation note:

Heb “their knees will run with water.” The expression probably refers to urination caused by fright, which is how the LXX renders the phrase. More colloquial English would simply be “they will wet their pants,” but as D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:261, n. 98) notes, the men likely wore skirts which were short enough to expose urine on the knees.

The NETS translation of the LXX renders the phrase in question as “all thighs shall be sullied with moisture.” Most translations from the Hebrew translate the highlighted phrase as “all knees will be weak as water” (cf. NLT, NASB, KJV, etc.) or even more genericly, “all knees will turn to water” (cf. NRSV, REB, etc.).

If we focus on the “caused by fright” aspect of this idiom, then the translation of the NLT, KJV, NASB et al. is more easily understood. To be “as weak as water” implies a knee-knocking experience in which you’ve lost the foundational support of your legs. Atheletes with wobbly knees have to wear braces in order to keep competing or their legs will “go out from under them”.

However, as best as I can understand it, the literal Hebrew is “will flow as water” or “will run with water”. Further, an alternate meaning of the word for “water” is “waters of the feet”, which is a reference to the Hebrew idiom “cover his feet” - that is, the act of pulling down your robes, skirts or pants to go to the bathroom - and opens the door for understanding this phrase as someone who has lost bladder control. This is the more vivid path that the LXX and NEB translators chose, as did the NET Bible and TNIV:

NET: Every heart will melt with fear and every hand will be limp; everyone will faint and every knee will be wet with urine.‘

TNIV: Every heart will melt and every hand go limp; every spirit will become faint and every knee be wet with urine.‘

Whether formal (”as weak as water”) or functional (”be wet with urine”), all of these translations are still grounded in the form of the underlying Hebrew or Greek and have not fully utilized an equivalent English idiom. Or at least I’m not recognizing “as weak as water” as a common idiom, even if we understand what it means.

It seems that if a translation were to render this passage with a modern English idiom, they would have two choices:

Every heart melts and every hand goes limp; every spirit becomes faint and every knee buckles beneath them.’

Every heart will melt and every hand go limp; every spirit will become faint and in fright they will wet their pants.’

Which sounds more likely?