future indicatives as imperatives

Harold R. Holmyard III hholmyard at ont.com
Mon Jan 15 22:09:45 EST 2001


Dear Bart,

You wrote:

>    My inclination is to translate these all as imperatives: e.g., for the
>negatives above, "Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not sodomize
>children, to not engage in sexual immorality."  And for the positive:
>"Love the God who made you."
>
>    But one of my grad students who's reading over all my drafts for me,
>and whose judgment i trust, is pushing me to go for the more conventional,
>"You shall not..." and "You shall..."  Her point is that this helps
>preserve the allusive character of the injunctions (i.e., it sounds more
>like BIble language); my point is that I never talk that way (I always
>say, "Shut the blasted door," never "You shall shut the blasted door"; or
>"Don't stay up too late," never "You shall not stay up too late") ((and
>also that the repetitions of the shalls and shall notes gets rather
>tiresome))
>
>   Does anyone else want to weigh in?

The Holman Christian Standard Bible is a recent translation, and it kept
"shall," but only for the Ten Commandments, I think.

			Yours,
			Harold Holmyard
			Dallas, TX





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