nly because you placed him at the head of the
department of that question, but also because of the peculiar mode in
which he treated the subject. My replies shall be _seriatim_.

1. Luther was not the first who translated *ken iten liydido sheinah*
"Denn seinen Freunden gibt er _es_ schlafend." A far greater Hebraist
than Luther, who flourished about two hundred years before the great
German Reformer came into note, put the same construction on that sacred
affirmation. Rabbi Abraham Hacohen of Zante, who paraphrased the whole
Hebrew Psalter into modern metrical Hebrew verse (which, according to a
P.S., was completed in 1326), interprets the sentence in question thus:

*ki ken yiten el teref
l'yidido ushnato meenehu lo taref*

"For surely God shall give food
To His beloved, and his sleep shall not be withheld from him."

2. It is more than problematical whether the eminent translator,
Mendelsohn, was influenced by {108} Luther's _error_ (?), or by his
own superior knowledge of the sacred tongue.

3. I do not think that the phrase, "the proper Jewish notion of gain,"
was either called for or relevant to the subject.

4. The reign of James I. was by no means as distinguished for Hebrew
scholarship as were the immediate previous reigns. Indeed it would
appear that the knowledge of the sacred languages was at a very low ebb
in this country during the agitating period of the Reformation, so much
so that even the unaccountable Henry VIII. was forced to exclaim,
"Vehementer dolere nostratium Theologorum sortem sanctissime linguae
scientia carentium, et linguarum doctrinam fuisse intermissam." (_Hody_,
p. 466.)

When Coverdale made his version of the Bible he was not only aided by
Tindale, but also by the celebrated Hebrew, of the Hebrews, Emanuel
Tremellius, who was then professor of the sacred tongue in the
University of Cambridge, where that English Reformer was educated; and
Coverdale translated the latter part of Ps. cxxvii. 2. as follows: "For
look, to whom it pleaseth Him, He giveth it in sleep."

When the translation was revised, during the reign of James I., the most
accomplished Anglo-Hebraist was, by some caprice of jealousy, forced to
leave this country; I mean Hugh Broughton. He communicated many
renderings to the revisers, some of which they thoughtlessly rejected,
and others, to use Broughton's own phrase, "they thrust into the
margin." A perusal of Broughton's works[6] gives one an accurate notio