bt existed, the text was left unchanged, but the alternative
word was placed in the margin. In regard of other terms, of which the
old rendering was certainly wrong, as in the case of the Hebrew term
_Asherah_ (probably the wooden symbol of a goddess), the Revisers have
used the word, whether in the singular or plural, as a proper name. In
the case of the Hebrew term "Sheol" (corresponding to the Greek term
"Hades"), variously rendered in the Authorised Version by the words
"grave," "pit," and "hell," the Revisers have adopted in the historical
books the first or second words with a marginal note, "Heb. _Sheol_," but
in the poetical books they have reversed this arrangement. The American
Revisers, on the contrary, specify that in all cases where the word
occurs in the Hebrew text they place it unchanged in the English text,
and without any margin. The case is a difficult one, but the English
arrangement is to be preferred, as the reader would not so plainly need a
preliminary explanation.

The last case that it here seems necessary to allude to is the change
everywhere of the words "the tabernacle of the congregation" into "the
tent of meeting," as the former words convey an entirely wrong sense.
These and the use of several other terms are carefully noted and
explained by the Revisers, and will, I hope, induce every careful reader
of their revision to make it his duty to study their prefatory words.
The almost unavoidable differences between them and the American
Revisers, as to our own language, are alluded to by them in terms both
friendly and wise, and may be considered fully to express the sentiments
of the New Testament Company, by whom the subject is less precisely
alluded to.

In passing from the Preface to the great work which it introduces, I feel
the greatest difficulty, as a member of a different Company, in making
more than a few very general comments. In fact, I should scarcely have
ventured to do even this, had I not met with a small but very instructive
volume on the revision of the Authorised Version of the Old Testament
written by one of the American Revisers, and published at New York some
fifteen or sixteen years ago. The volume is entitled--perhaps with
excusable brevity--_A Companion to the Revised Old Testament_. The
writer was Rev. Dr. Talbot W. Chambers, of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch
Church of New York, from whose preface I learn that he was the only
pastor in the Company, the others