Hi all,

well, looking at the evidence here, maybe i did mistranslate LLX. I don’t have a good argument for the αὐτόν, even though i assumed it was Damascus. Of course, later about Gaza (Γάζης), the plural accusative αὐτούς is used, which i took to mean the people of Gaza. But now i’m not sure.

There is a critical version of LXX that changes all these to αὐτούς, which i believe it means the respective people of each location. Also, there is a translation to pre-modern Greek (1850’s) that when the name of the place is feminine is using αὐτῆς, the feminine genetivus, meaning Damascus, or Gaza. So, i’m not alone in understanding αὐτόν to refer to the place, but it’s questionable why it was used for Damascus.

Furthermore, there is no adversative (but) before the ‘because’. I was being liberal in my translation there to make it clearer. But it’s not really there, in the Hebrew or LXX.

Thank you all for helping me think through this. It doesn’t make the English translations any more clearer to me, but my proposal seem to not be viable.

Hey, thank you all for your two cents on this, much appreciated. Like i said, i am not so sure now that i understood the Greek correctly. I must have misread it.

Just so you know, the reason i even posted this was because i wanted to see what others think about my proposed translation–mission accomplished!

Now, how did i get the idea to translate it from the LXX? Well, i read this passage from KJV and it made no sense to me. So i thought it must be due to the KJV. Then i read it in other translations, and they all pretty much said the same thing. Then i thought to check the LXX, and it just dawned on me that maybe it’s not the punishment God is turning away (a supplied word anyhow), but himself, his face, his favor. For some reason, it all clicked!

Or so i thought…