Texts in Conversation
Proverbs 30 names four things that are never satisfied, starting with Sheol. The Greek Septuagint translation replaces it with Tartarus, the underworld prison from Greek mythology, showing how the translators incorporated Greek ideas.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Proverbs 30:16
Hebrew Bible
15 The leech has two daughters: “Give! Give!” There are three things that will never be satisfied, four that have never said, “Enough”— 16 the grave, the barren womb; earth has not been satisfied with water; and fire has never said, “Enough!” 17 The eye that mocks at a father and despises obeying a mother—the ravens of the valley will peck it out, and the young vultures will eat it.
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Proverbs 30:16
Septuagint
15 The horse-leech had three dearly-beloved daughters: and these three did not satisfy her; and the fourth was not contented so as to say, Enough. 16 Hades, and the love of a woman, and Tartarus, and the earth not filled with water; water also and fire will not say, It is enough. 17 The eye that laughs to scorn a father, and dishonors the old age of a mother, let the ravens of the valleys pick it out, and let the young eagles devour it.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The Septuagint (also called the LXX), the translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek first carried out in the third century BCE, indicates that some Jews during the period were textual scholars who had a sophisticated mastery of both Hebrew and Greek. They were also familiar with Greek culture. Occasionally a LXX translator appeals, for example, to Greek myth to make a Hebrew idiom intelligible. Whereas Sheol, for instance, is the common name for the underworld in the Hebrew Bible, it is called Tartarus in the Greek versions of Proverbs and the book of Job (LXX Proverbs 30:16; Job. 40:20; 41:32). This is the name of the underworld in Greek myth (Hesiod, Theogony 726–825) ..."
Matthew Goff, “Scribes and Pedagogy in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. Samuel L. Adams and Matthew J. Goff (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2020), 195–212.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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