OG Daniel 11:33: Worn Out by It
The Old Greek says that the people will fall:
‘…by the sword and they will be worn out by it.‘
But the Hebrew instead mentions they’ll fall:
‘…by the sword and flame.’
There’s no obvious reason for this as the Hebrew word for ‘flame’ can’t be confused with the word for ‘worn out.’ If the manuscript was very damaged here, it’s possible that ‘flame’ and ‘worn out’ were confused visually, but it would have to be very damaged or even missing completely and our translator simply guessed the missing word.
Another possibility is that our translator got mixed up in his head with Aramaic.
The Hebrew for flame and the Aramaic for weariness do look similar, especially if the text was smudged:
- להבה = flame
- ליהות = weariness
So if the text was smudged, it’s possible that the translator mixed up the two words if he also mixed up Aramaic and Hebrew. Since the two languages are very close to each other (and much of Daniel is written in Aramaic), it’s very possible that he did.
On the other hand, perhaps a later Hebrew copyist got confused in that exact way, changing ‘weariness’ to ‘flame’.
So we don’t know.