I knew that I was going to be awestruck from time to time, as I began translating Wycliffe’s Bible into Modern English. And discovering a sailing term where most Bible translations don’t have it… was amazing.

I had just figuratively walked through the door of translating Proverbs… and as an art lover examining an obscure painting in the Louvre in Paris, I stood there, staring at the painting before me.

I couldn’t quite figure out what the man of understanding was grasping tightly in his hands.

The passage read:”A wise man heringe schal be wisere; and a man vndurstonding schal holde gouernails.” – Proverbs 1:5 in the Wycliffe Bible

The King James says, “a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.” And that’s mostly what the Geneva Bible, and Jay Green’s, Robert Young’s translations said.

He is holding a “gouvernail”…

Gouernails… that sounds familiar to me.

The Wycliffe Bible relies heavily on the Latin Vulgate. In this verse, the Vulgate has the word gubernacula.

Furthermore, there is a lot of “French” in Middle Ages English. So I thought, “Maybe I should look this word up in a French dictionary.“

The authoritative Larousse Dictionary defines a “Gouvernail” as an Appareil mobile destiné à la manœuvre et à la conduite des bateaux.

That means, in plain English, a movable instrument used for moving and guiding boats.

In other words, a gouvernail is a rudder, the kind that is used for sailing.

But is this sailing term found in the Hebrew?

As I began the Modern Wycliffe Translation of the Old Testament with the Book of Proverbs, I committed myself to referring to the Hebrew definition first for each word and phrase. This means that if the meaning is not found in the Hebrew, I won’t put it into the final translation.

So, does the Hebrew somehow refer to a rudder in this passage?

So I looked up the Hebrew word. It’s TaCh-Bu-Low-T (or תַּחְבֻּל֥וֹת). (Strong’s #8458)

And according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, it does indeed refer to steering boats by a rudder or ropes!

Most of the other translations miss this… However, I was not alone.

I was thrilled to find that Frances Siewert, translator of the Amplified Bible, saw it as well. In her translation, it says, “the person of understanding will acquire skill and attain to sound counsel [so that he may be able to steer his course rightly]–

Let’s grasp tightly to the rudder and the ropes

So a man of understanding is grasping the rudder of his sailboat. Large or small, the captain of the ship captures the winds God sends, and uses a rudder to steer a course towards their destination.

Likewise, we learn life by “doing”. We learn life lessons with each challenge we face. As we are sailing into challenging waters we have never faced before, we put our accumulated understanding to use, to bring the ship safely to port.

Indeed, by focusing on scraps of lessons learned along the way, we found a hidden gem most translators had missed in Proverbs 1:5.

No doubt, we will find many more.

I hope you will join me on this journey into knowing His Word more intimately, more deeply.

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