Ether 1:34

[askandanswer]

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

 

Would Jared’s intention be made clearer if he had used a word with a meaning completely opposite to the word that he did use, eg, see below:

 

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not misunderstand our words.

 

It seems to make more sense if Jared had implored his brother for the Lord's help so that they would not misunderstand each other rather than asking for the Lord's help so that might not understand each other.

[pam]

You have to remember we are talking about translations here.  

[Guest]

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

 

Would Jared’s intention be made clearer if he had used a word with a meaning completely opposite to the word that he did use, eg, see below:

 

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not misunderstand our words.

 

It seems to make more sense if Jared had implored his brother for the Lord's help so that they would not misunderstand each other rather than asking for the Lord's help so that might not understand each other.

 

It is simply a matter of phrasing.  See here:

 

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, [that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words].

 

That entire phrase is one thought... therefore, [that we may not understand our words] describes Confound and the entire phrase describes Cry.

 

 

 

 

This is different from:

 [that he will not confound us], [that we may not understand our words].

Which is two thoughts... both phrases are separate and describes Cry.  In this case, misunderstand is a better word because it describes the crying action, not the confounding action.

 

But since there is no comma to separate the "that"s in that phrase, then the entire phrase after the comma (after Lord) is one thought which is the first phrasing above.

Edited December 10, 2015 by anatess

[Guest]

Yeah, the syntax isn't perfect, but as anatess pointed out, it says what it means.

[zil]

Let's eat grandma.

Let's eat, grandma.

Commas save lives.

 

...seen recently on a t-shirt; same idea - the presence or absence of a comma makes a big difference!

[Sunday21]

Hysterical!

[LeSellers]

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not misunderstand our words.

 

It seems to make more sense if Jared had implored his brother for the Lord's help so that they would not misunderstand each other rather than asking for the Lord's help so that might not understand each other.

Others have pointed out that the punctuation and the resultant phrasing would make a huge difference in understanding this passage.

What we tend to forget is that it was not Joseph (nor even Oliver) who punctuated the Book of Mormon — it was Grandin's typesetter. We do not sustain printers, seers, and punctuators.

There are a lot of difficulties introduced into the text of the Book of Mormon by Grandin's folks. We have even added some ourselves. For instance, in 1 Nephi, the first verse of chapter 8 belongs as the last verse of chapter 7. Many people have supposed, because it is in chapter 8, that this verse means that Lehi and his family stayed in the valley of Lemuel for a year while the crops ripened, or that the valley had seeds of every kind.

Nonsense! The boys "had gathered together all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every kind, and also of the seeds of fruit of every kind" while they were back getting their wives. (Ishmael's family, too, helped.)

In any case, the trouble is not in the text, it's in the translation (per 1828 meaning of the word).

Secondly, if we read the text carefully, it is not necessary that we have the Jaredites speaking "Adamic". Just because they were not confounded in itheir language does not mean that they kept the original language of the antediluvians. What may have happened is that the Lord changed the language of the entire group.

Lehi

Edited December 11, 2015 by LeSellers

[Vort]

In computer programmingese, the sentence is parsed as:

 

Cry unto the Lord, that he will not [confound us that we may not understand our words].

 

That is,

 

![confound us that we may not understand our words]

 

The "not" negates the entire following phrase, not just the verb in isolation.

[cdowis]

Let's eat grandma.

Let's eat, grandma.

Commas save lives.

 

 

 

Look up the road ahead

Look up the road, a head!

[cdowis]

In computer programmingese, the sentence is parsed as:

 

Cry unto the Lord, that he will not [confound us that we may not understand our words].

 

That is,

 

![confound us that we may not understand our words]

 

The "not" negates the entire following phrase, not just the verb in isolation.

 

Yeah, English has this weird rule about avoiding the double negative.

[Guest]

In my opinion, the "understood" phrase is a lot easier to parse than the beginning of the verse:

 

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

 

That phrase in red, to me, is more tricky... who is the large and mighty man and who is the man highly favored of the Lord and which brother said unto who...  that one needs more parsing gymnastics.

[zil]

In my opinion, the "understood" phrase is a lot easier to parse than the beginning of the verse:

 

34  And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

 

That phrase in red, to me, is more tricky... who is the large and mighty man and who is the man highly favored of the Lord and which brother said unto who...  that one needs more parsing gymnastics.

 

That one doesn't seem hard to me (it's X who is a large and mighty man, and X who is highly favored of the Lord; where X is "the brother of Jared").  But I agree that sometimes in a verse with two or more people, it's really hard to tell which one is represented by any given he, him, or his.

 

It would be nice if they'd used names in those situations. For example (sorry, couldn't find a video) in The Big Bang Theory where Leonard and Sheldon are discussing Penny and Lesley:

 

 

Leonard: If Penny didn’t know that Lesley had already turned me down then that would unambiguously mean that she, Penny, thought that I should ask her, Lesley, out, indicating that she, Penny, had no interest in me asking her, Penny, out. But because she did know that I had asked Lesley out and that she, Lesley, had turned me down, then she, Penny, could be offering consolation. "That’s too bad, you would have made a cute couple." But while thinking, good, Leonard remains available.

 

Sheldon: You’re a lucky man, Leonard.

Leonard: How so?

Sheldon: You’re talking to one of the three men in the Western hemisphere capable of following that train of thought.

[cdowis]

That phrase in red, to me, is more tricky... who is the large and mighty man and who is the man highly favored of the Lord and which brother said unto who...  that one needs more parsing gymnastics.

 

 

It really helps to have experience in translating the classical languages, such as Latin and Greek.  Verbs are placed at the end of sentences, nouns and adjectives separated by entire phrases, etc.  Just another day at the office.

 

English has the annoying habit of being constrained by where words are placed, rather than agreement by case and gender.  Once you learn the endings of verbs and nouns, things just fit together regardless of placement.

 

I would like to point out that this record was clearly written by someone with a very sophisticated familiarity with ancient languages, and not by somebody whose sole language is English.  Its awkward structure belies a sophisticated understanding of this language.

Edited December 12, 2015 by cdowis