Zechariah 14:5 “and all the saints with THEE” or “with HIM”? The Hebrew text or the so called Greek Septuagint?
Zechariah 14:5 KJB – “And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains:…ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with THEE.”
ESV (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NASB, NET, Jehovah Witness NWT, all Catholic versions) – “Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with HIM.”
Lexham English Bible 2012 – “And Yahweh my God will come, and all the holy ones with HIM”.[a]
Footnotes: Zechariah 14:5 Hebrew “you”; LXX has “him”
The King James Bible translators were well aware of the reading “and all the saints with HIM” because this is the way the Bishops’ bible along with Coverdale, The Great Bible and Matthew’s bibles read. But they made a deliberate decision to go with the Hebrew reading instead, and like the Geneva Bible did, they went with “and all the saints with THEE.”
“and all the saints with THEE.”
Agreeing with the reading found in the King James Bible – “and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with THEE.” are the Geneva Bible 1587 the JPS (Jewish Publication Society) of 1917, Hebrew Publishing Company bible 1936, the Judaica Press Tanach 2004, Webster’s bible 1833, Lesser O.T. 1835, Julia Smith Translation 1855, The Jewish Family Bible 1864, The Revised English Bible 1877, the Revised Version 1885, ASV 1901, Youngs 1898, Darby 1890, Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible 1902, The Ancient Hebrew Bible 1907, The New Jewish Version 1985, the World English Bible 2000, The Complete Tanach 2004 – “And the Lord, my God, shall come; all holy ones WITH YOU.”, Green’s Literal 2005, KJV 21st Century Version 1998, The Koster Scriptures 1998, the Complete Jewish Bible 1998, Third Millennium Bible 1998, The New European Version 2010, The Hebrew Transliteration Bible 2010 – “ADONAI (יהוה) my Elohim (אלהים) shall come, [and] all the Kedoshim with THEE.”, The Jewish Orthodox Bible 2011 – “and Hashem Elohai shall come, and kol Kadoshim (all the holy ones) with Thee [see Daniel 7:13-14].”, The Voice 2012, The International Standard Version 2014, The Hebrew Names Version 2014, The Far Above All Translation 2014, The Modern English Version 2014 and The Hebraic Roots Bible 2015.
The Jewish Virtual Library Complete Tanach 1994 – “and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with THEE.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/book-of-zechariah#14
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Matthew Henry, John Calvin and other Bible commentators have seen a reference here to God Himself and a prophetic reference to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown comment:- “Lord my God . . . with thee–The mention of the “Lord my God” leads the prophet to pass suddenly to a direct address to Jehovah. It is as if “lifting up his head” (Lu 21:28), he suddenly sees in vision the Lord coming, and joyfully exclaims, “All the saints with Thee!” So Isa 25:9. “
The Geneva Bible notes read: “Because they did not credit the Prophets words, he turns to God and comforts himself in that that he knew that these things would come, and says, “You, O God, with your angels will come to perform this great thing.”
Matthew Henry comments: “The Lord my God shall come, shall come to the comfort of all that are his; for, “Blessed Lord, all the saints shall be with THEE, and it shall be their everlasting happiness to dwell in THY presence; and therefore come, Lord Jesus.” The Lord my God shall come, shall come to the comfort of all that are his; for, “Blessed Lord, all the saints shall be with THEE, and it shall be their everlasting happiness to dwell in THY presence; and therefore come, Lord Jesus.”
John Calvin notes: “All the saints WITH THEE (caps are mine). There seems to be here a kind of indignation, as though the Prophet turned himself away from his hearers, whom he observed to be in a measure prepared obstinately to reject his heavenly doctrine; for he turns his discourse to God.”
The Coffmann’s Commentary: ”And Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with THEE …” Significantly Jesus Christ himself in the Matthew parallel made certain reference to the final judgment:
“And all the holy ones with THEE …” “The holy ones are the angels.” Many New Testament passages associate the “holy ones” or angels with the Second Coming of Christ, as in Matthew 13:41,49, and 2 Thessalonians 1:7.
“With thee …” The change to the second person here is no problem. It is simply the manner in which the prophets wrote.
To make the connection between this passage and Matthew 24 even more certain, it should be recalled that when Jesus spoke the remarkable words recorded in Matthew 24, that he did so sitting upon the mount of Olives, the very mountain so prominent in this passage (Matthew 24:3); add that to the fact of this passage in Zechariah’s being one of only two places where the mountain is mentioned in the Old Testament (the other being Ezekiel 11:23), and named only in this place. From all this, it is clear enough that Jesus interpreted this passage as teaching the same thing that he taught in Matthew 24.”
John Trapp Commentary – English Puritan – “And all the saints with THEE – The prophet, in a holy indignation at his hearers’ obstinace and untractableness, turns him thus to God; like as doth old Jacob, Genesis 49:18; and our blessed Saviour cried out with the people’s perverseness, Matthew 11:25-26.”
Though the NKJV still reads: “The LORD my God will come, and all the saints with YOU.” YET it footnotes: “The ancient versions and some Hebrew manuscripts read HIM.”
Versions that do read “The Lord my God will come, and all the saints with HIM” are the RSV, (which footnotes that HIM comes from the Greek LXX, Syriac, Vulgate and Targum, but the Hebrew reads YOU), NIV, NASB, the NRSV, ESV, Holman Standard, NET, Jehovah Witness New World Translation and all Catholic Versions.
IT GETS WORSE.
What is so amazing about these fake bibles that have rejected the Hebrew text “all the saints WITH THEE” for the so called Greek Septuagint reading of “all the saints WITH HIM”, is THE REST OF THE VERSE as it is found in the Septuagint.
The first part of the verse in the Hebrew and the KJB reads: “And YE SHALL FLEE TO the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains SHALL REACH UNTO AZAL: YEA, YE SHALL FLEE, LIKE AS YE FLED FROM BEFORE the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with THEE.”
Even versions like the NASB, NIV, ESV read basically the same in the first part of the verse IN THE HEBREW TEXT AND NOT AS IT IS IN THE SEPTUAGINT.
BUT the so called Greek Septuagint actually says: “And the valley of MY mountains SHALL BE CLOSED UP, and the valley of the mountains SHALL BE JOINED ON TO JASOD, AND SHALL BE BLOCKED UP AS IT WAS BLOCKED UP IN THE DAYS OF the earthquake, in the days of Ozias king of Juda; and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with HIM.”
You can see it here –
http://www.ecmarsh.com/lxx/Zacharias/index.htm
So these fake bibles have rejected almost everything else the LXX says in the first 4/5th of the verse, but latched on to the last word – “him” instead of “thee”. And they call this “the science of textual criticism”.