The rulings

Ruling 1

Cruxes English cannot hold open: print the stranger reading, with the expected one in the note.

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 2

Home gloss by default: contextual departures are allowed with a note; the home gloss holds wherever the author builds a chain.

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 3

Several stranger senses: the collocation decides (כָּבַשׁ + land → “subdue,” Num 32:22).

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 4

Source of the home gloss: the Hebrew sets it in the OT; NT quotations follow their Greek and note the Hebrew.

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 5

Cognates: Hebrew loanwords already in English; Greek cognates for Greek; LXX cognates for Hebrew only when the Hebrew gloss is open.

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 6

Varied constructions stay varied (v. 6, “waters to waters”).

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 7

Apparatus threshold: a change of sense, a home-gloss departure, or a crux.

Origin: Gen 1 · Narrowed by 75

Ruling 8

Pronouns keep grammatical gender (standing note above).

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 9

Divine names: יהוה → Adonai, in small caps (ruling 49); אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה → Adonai Elohim, Elohim in small caps; human אֲדֹנִי → “lord”; אֱלֹהִים → Elohim with singular agreement, “elohim” with plural; אֵל → El, El compounds as names; NT κύριος / θεός stay “Lord” / “God” with the Hebrew noted.

Origin: Gen 1

Ruling 10

Verbs stay verbs. A finite verb in the source becomes a finite verb in English. An infinitive or participle becomes a finite clause, or a verbal -ing or to-infinitive when a finite verb would impose a tense or person the source leaves open. Never use “the X-ing of” or “-tion of” unless the source has a noun. Applied in Genesis 2:4, 17, 18; דַּעַת stays “knowing” (2:9, 17).

Origin: Gen 2

Ruling 11

אָדָם / ἄνθρωπος: human or man. “Human” by default. “Man” when a woman who is distinct from the אָדָם / ἄνθρωπος, and already exists in the story, appears in the same verse or the next. Two exceptions keep “human”: when “male and female” describes the אָדָם itself (Gen 1:27; 5:2), and when אִישׁ / ἀνήρ is in the same verse (Gen 2:23), so that “man” stays theirs. Applied in Genesis 2:22, 25.

Origin: Gen 2

Ruling 12

Parallelism against syntax. In poetry, parallelism may override the syntax rule for function words only (אֲשֶׁר, אֶת, the conjunction), never for content words or word order. Every override is noted (Ps 1:3).

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 13

Verbless clauses stay verbless in poetry; prose may supply “is” (Ps 1:2).

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 14

Lineation. Cola follow the Masoretic accents (the main divider in each verse), not modern editors’ line breaks.

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 15

Aspect in poetry. Qatal as English perfect or past; yiqtol as present or habitual unless context is plainly future (Ps 1:1–5).

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 16

Formal frames (alphabet frames, acrostics, envelopes) are never imitated in English and always noted.

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 17

Puns in the text when English has a pun that keeps both home glosses (Man / Woman, Gen 2:23; counsel / council, Ps 1:1, 5). Otherwise the pun goes to the note.

Origin: Ps 1

Ruling 18

Names. Familiar English forms in the text; the Hebrew form, and the meaning where the narrative plays on it, in the notes (1 Kgs 1: Adonijah, Bathsheba; Gen 2:14: Hiddekel, Euphrates, Assyria).

Origin: 1 Kgs 1

Ruling 19

Ketiv and qere. Translate the qere throughout; note the ketiv only when the sense differs (1 Kgs 1:47).

Origin: 1 Kgs 1

Ruling 20

Split home glosses. A word may carry two home glosses by stem or construction, declared once in the lexicon and not noted at each occurrence: עָשָׂה “make” / “do”; יָלַד qal “bear,” hiphil “produce”; מָלַךְ qal “reign,” hiphil “make reign.”

Origin: 1 Kgs 1

Ruling 21

Oath formulas. Keep the literal “if” with the curse unspoken (1 Kgs 1:51; Heb 3:11), under one standing note.

Origin: 1 Kgs 1

Ruling 22

Deferential speech. Keep third-person address and its shifts (“the throne of my lord the king after him,” 1 Kgs 1:20); do not convert it to “you.”

Origin: 1 Kgs 1

Ruling 23

Puns may add a word. To carry a source pun, the translation may add a word, noted in the apparatus (Isa 5:7, “just outcry”). This widens ruling 17.

Origin: Isa 5

Ruling 24

Sound over literality. Where the source marks sound (a pun, an alliterating or rhyming pair, assonance), the translator may prefer an English rendering that carries the sound over the literal gloss; the literal sense goes to the note (Isa 5:6 “briar and bramble”; 5:7 “misjudgment”). Where the source marks no sound, the gloss rules stand.

Origin: Isa 5

Ruling 25

Hapax legomena. Look for the reading first in the same book, then elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, then in cognate languages and the versions (Isa 5:7 מִשְׂפָּח → Isa 3:17).

Origin: Isa 5

Ruling 26

Plurals of abstraction become English singulars (חַיִּים “life,” שַׁעֲשׁוּעִים “play”); Elohim is excepted as a name.

Origin: Isa 5

Ruling 27

No editorial headings or speaker labels in the text. Section titles, if any, go in the apparatus.

Origin: Isa 5

Ruling 28

Aramaic home glosses. A cognate tie where the Aramaic and Hebrew senses overlap (חֵיוָה “living thing,” עָלַם “age”); a tie by function where they diverge (Aramaic עֲבַד “make”). Reverse concordance applies within each language, not across them.

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 29

Aramaic-only words take English words never used as Hebrew home glosses (אֲרוּ “lo,” שָׁלְטָן “dominion,” נִדְנֶה “sheath,” זִיו “brightness”).

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 30

Aramaic is set in its own typography (Gen 31:47; Jer 10:11; Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Dan 2:4b–7:28), so the switch is visible on the page. This is the one typographic exception to ruling 27, because it marks the source’s own language, not an editorial division. Display: a companion typeface plus a thin marginal rule for the length of the section; never italics (kept for supplied words), small caps or color alone. Plain text and docs: ⟦Aramaic⟧ … ⟦Hebrew⟧ at each switch. Data (JSON): a language tag on each span, not each verse (hbo for Hebrew, arc for Aramaic), because the switches fall mid-verse (Dan 2:4) and can be two words long (Gen 31:47).

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 31

רוּחַ. Split home gloss: “wind” for weather and the directions of the sky; “spirit” when a person or Elohim is the possessor. Cruxes stay under ruling 1 (Gen 1:2 keeps “wind”).

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 32

אֱנָשׁ / אֱנוֹשׁ = “mortal.” Dan 7:13 reads “one like a son of a mortal”; the NT’s ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου stays “son of humans,” with notes pointing both ways.

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 33

Two words, one cognate. When two source words compete for one Hebrew cognate’s gloss, frequency decides and the cognate is noted (נוּר “fire,” אֶשָּׁא “flame”).

Origin: Dan 7

Ruling 34

עֶבֶד. Split home gloss: “slave” when the person is acquired, owned, sold or released; “servant” in deferential and royal speech and in titles of divine service. The verb עָבַד stays “serve.”

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 35

Case markers. In the legal codes, כִּי “when” (main case), אִם “if” (sub-case), וְאִם “and if.” “Then” may be supplied to open an apodosis, without a note.

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 36

Paragraphing follows the Masoretic open and closed sections (פ, ס).

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 37

Chain against collocation. Within a literary unit the chain wins; across books the collocation decides.

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 38

Elohim with no agreement. Lowercase “elohim,” noted as a crux (Exod 21:6). Extends ruling 9.

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 39

Concrete over abstract. Keep the source’s material word: “silver,” not “money”; “meat,” not “food.”

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 40

A crux with no attested stranger sense. Print the expected reading and give the evidence in the note (Exod 21:3 בְּגַפּוֹ). Limits ruling 1.

Origin: Exod 21

Ruling 41

Pronouns and personification. Ruling 8 (grammatical gender) applies to persons and to personified figures who speak or act (wisdom: “she”). Inanimate referents take “it,” whatever their Hebrew gender.

Origin: Prov 8

Ruling 42

No capital for personifications (“wisdom,” not “Wisdom”); the pronouns carry the personification. Parallels ruling 38.

Origin: Prov 8

Ruling 43

Personifications and ruling 11. A personified female figure does not turn אָדָם into “man” (Prov 8:34).

Origin: Prov 8

Ruling 44

Synonym fields. Where a book works a field of near-synonyms, the glosses are fixed as a set and published as a table in the apparatus (Prov 8: wisdom, understanding, discernment, knowing, shrewdness, scheme, discipline, counsel, sound sense).

Origin: Prov 8

Ruling 45

Order of precedence, highest first: (1) a crux, under rulings 1 and 40; (2) sound the source marks (24); (3) a chain within the unit (37); (4) concrete over abstract (39); (5) the collocation (3); (6) the home gloss (2). Each note cites the deciding ruling.

Origin: Prov 8 · Amended by 50

Ruling 46

Doctrinally decisive cruxes. Where a verse is load-bearing in Jewish or Christian exegesis, or where the ancient versions split along a later doctrinal line, the note names the versions and the interpretive tradition, whichever reading is printed (Prov 8:22: LXX ἔκτισεν against Aquila ἐκτήσατο; the Arian controversy; Genesis Rabbah 1:1).

Origin: Prov 8

Ruling 47

Marking an acrostic. The Hebrew letter stands beside each stanza number; irregular letter orders are noted (Lam 2–4: פ before ע). Marking, not imitation; ruling 16 stands.

Origin: Lam 1

Ruling 48

Half-lines. Poetry lineation shows the break between half-lines with a visible space; in qinah the second half stays shorter.

Origin: Lam 1 · Amended by 78

Ruling 49

The Tetragrammaton in small caps. The Tetragrammaton read as Adonai is set in small caps (ADONAI in plain text and docs); written אֲדֹנָי is set in regular type (Lam 1:14–15). אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה prints as “Adonai Elohim” with Elohim in small caps. Refines ruling 9.

Origin: Lam 1

Ruling 50

Ruling 39 in the order of precedence. See ruling 45, as amended.

Origin: Lam 1 · Amendeds 45

Ruling 51

Quotation marks only where the text introduces speech (a verb of saying, לֵאמֹר). An unmarked shift of voice stays unmarked.

Origin: Lam 1

Ruling 52

Two versions, two lexicons. The Old Testament is offered twice: a Masoretic version under the Hebrew home glosses and an LXX version under the Greek home glosses shared with the NT. Concordance runs within each version; differences are kept, not harmonized.

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 53

LXX base text: Swete (Vaticanus-based, public domain). Göttingen and Rahlfs readings go in the apparatus where they differ in substance.

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 54

Marking the versions. In the LXX version, material lacking in the Masoretic text is set ⸢thus⸣; LXX lacks are marked ‸; transpositions as a plus and a minus. In JSON, each span carries an attribute against the Masoretic text.

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 55

οὐρανός: singular “sky,” plural “skies,” in both Testaments (“the kingdom of the skies”).

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 56

πνεῦμα follows the רוּחַ split (ruling 31); cruxes stay under ruling 1 (LXX Gen 1:2 “wind”).

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 57

Greek cognates and false friends. A cognate is printed only where its living English sense overlaps the Greek, and is always noted (συναγωγή “gathering” for water, “synagogue” for the institution; σύστημα “body”).

Origin: LXX Gen 1

Ruling 58

ξύλον = “wood” for the tree of life and the cross alike. Provisional, pending Revelation 22.

Origin: LXX Gen 1 · Provisional by 61

Ruling 59

NT base text: SBLGNT (CC BY 4.0).

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 60

Readings behind the English tradition. Where the KJV follows a reading the base text lacks, the note gives it and its origin (Rev 22:14; 22:19, Erasmus).

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 61

ξύλον = “wood” made permanent; ruling 58 is no longer provisional.

Origin: Rev 22 · Provisionals 58

Ruling 62

ἄγγελος and מַלְאָךְ = “messenger” throughout, in the NT, the LXX and the Hebrew.

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 63

κύριος for the Tetragrammaton stays “Lord” in regular type in the Greek versions, with a note; small caps belong to the Masoretic version only.

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 64

λόγος = “logos,” plural “logoi.”

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 65

Verbless blessings and greetings stay verbless (“The grace of the Lord Jesus with all”). Extends ruling 13.

Origin: Rev 22

Ruling 66

Χριστός = “Christos” (transliterated), in the NT and the LXX version.

Origin: Guide

Ruling 67

Aramaic אֱלָהּ = “Elah” (transliterated).

Origin: Guide

Ruling 68

מָשִׁיחַ = “anointed” in the Masoretic version (the LXX version reads “Christos”).

Origin: Guide

Ruling 69

μετανοέω / μετάνοια = “rethink / rethinking,” in the NT and the LXX (including God as subject: Jon 3:10, Amos 7:3). The note cites Erasmus’ resipiscite against the Vulgate’s paenitentiam agite.

Origin: Guide

Ruling 70

ψυχικός / πνευματικός = “soulish / spiritual.”

Origin: Guide

Ruling 71

σάρκινος / σαρκικός = “fleshen / fleshly.”

Origin: Guide

Ruling 72

אָדָם → “Adam” only from its first unambiguous personal use; “human” until then. The Genesis 5 translation fixes the verse.

Origin: Guide

Ruling 73

Sirach is translated from the Greek only; its Hebrew manuscripts are cited in the notes.

Origin: Guide

Ruling 74

Expansive notes. A note opens with the evidence that decides the reading (text, versions, ancient interpreters, cognate-language texts), citing the evidence, not the arguer. It may then be as expansive as is useful: other translations, the history of interpretation, modern scholarship credited by name. Lexicons are finding aids; cite the passages they point to where possible.

Origin: Guide

Ruling 75

Notes loosened, and written by the translator. Ruling 7 now governs only decision notes (sense change, home-gloss departure, crux), which stay required. Reading notes are optional and may go wherever they help: chains and links across the canon, wordplay, the history of interpretation. As in Hart and Alter, the translator writes every note, drafted with the verse at the moment of decision and in the translator’s own voice, so the reasoning is on record and not reconstructed afterward.

Origin: Guide · Narroweds 7

Ruling 76

אָמָה follows the עֶבֶד split (ruling 34): "slave-woman" when acquired, sold or released; "servant-woman" in deferential self-address and titles (1 Kgs 1:13, 17; 1 Sam 1:11; 25:24–41; Ruth 3:9). Declared once in the lexicon (ruling 20). שִׁפְחָה needs its own home gloss (candidate "maid"), to be ruled at Gen 16

Why: 1 Kgs 1:13 gave Bathsheba "slave-woman" while Nathan's עַבְדְּךָ was "servant" in the same register

Origin: Review 2026-10-01 · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 77

δοῦλος / δουλεύω = "slave" / "be slave to" throughout the Greek (NT and LXX), no split: the NT argues on one word (1 Cor 7:21–23; Rom 6:16–22; Phil 1:1 against 2:7), and "slave" is the stranger attested sense (§1.1). Ruling 34 stays for Hebrew עֶבֶד; the difference between the versions is kept (52). Greek service field fixed as a set (44): παῖς of God's agent "servant" (split with "boy / child"; Isa 42:1 LXX = Matt 12:18; Acts 3:13, 26); θεράπων "attendant" (Heb 3:5); λατρεύω "serve" (cultic); διάκονος / διακονέω to be ruled at Mark 10:43–45. Rev 22:3, 6, 9 read "slaves," "fellow slave."

Why: Rev 22 applied ruling 34 to δοῦλος without a ruling

Origin: Review 2026-10-01 · Adopted 2026-10-01 (revised from the split first proposed)

Ruling 78

Poetry: cola break at the Masoretic accents (atnach, then major disjunctives; ruling 14); each colon on its own line; the second and any third colon of a line-group indented; in qinah the indented colon stays shorter. Amends 48: the "visible half-line break" is the indent, not a space. Authoring: / marks a colon break; exports render it as an indent (em-space in plain text, \q1 / \q2 in USFM). Applies also to Greek poetry (LXX Psalms; NT lines where SBLGNT sets them)

Why: Ps 1 put each colon on its own line; Lam 1 set two cola per line with a space. Bicolon lines wrap on phones and in columns, and Markdown collapsed the spaces

Origin: Review 2026-10-01 · Adopted 2026-10-01 (option C) · Amended by 102 · Amendeds 48

Ruling 79

Masoretic scribal features (small/large letters, doubled letters, puncta extraordinaria, inverted nuns, suspended letters): (1) translated as the text stands, the special letter read as an ordinary letter (Judg 18:30 "Manasseh"); no device in the English (27); (2) a note is required when the feature changes the sense (Judg 18:30), as a ketiv (19); (3) a reading note is optional when an interpretive tradition hangs on it (Gen 2:4, 2:7, 33:4; Num 10:35–36; Deut 6:4), citing the source (74); (4) every feature is recorded on its source token at ingest, so the translator does not hunt for them; (5) tiqqune soferim and ʿittur soferim are textual traditions, handled under 19, 46 and 74

Why: Gen 2 finding 6 was never numbered; Judg 18:30 shows the "tradition only" test is too narrow

Origin: Review 2026-10-01 · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 80

Anarthrous name-like nouns for cosmic places (תְּהוֹם "Abyss," שְׁאוֹל "Sheol") take a capital under the names rule (18), not the personification rule (42). They are not personified; they are used as names, nearly always without the article, and English already treats Sheol this way

Why: Gen 1:2 "on the face of Abyss"; Prov 8:27 repeats it. Ruling 42 forbids capitals for personifications but says nothing about name-like common nouns, and 18 is written for persons and places

Origin: Gen 1 · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 81

What counts as poetry. Psalms, Proverbs and Job (the three-book accent system) are lined throughout. Elsewhere, a passage is lined when (a) the Leningrad Codex sets it stichographically (Exod 15; Deut 32; Judg 5; 2 Sam 22), or (b) the translator lines it by its parallelism and says so in a reading note at its first verse, naming the extent. Otherwise prose, with parallelism left to the ear. Ruling 14 (lineation by the accents) applies only once a passage is poetry

Why: Gen 1:27 is set as verse in BHS and as prose in L; the pilots lined Isa 5 and Lam 1 by genre without a stated criterion

Origin: Gen 1 · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 82

The pair אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה (guide §6: "Adonai Elohim," Elohim in small caps) is marked token by token in authored text: {adonai} for the written אֲדֹנָי and {yhwh} for the יהוה token, in that order, so {adonai} {yhwh}. The divine-name gate keeps its one-marker-per-token count. The renderer, not the translator, turns a {adonai} immediately followed by {yhwh} into Adonai + small-caps Elohim (plain text: "Adonai ELOHIM"); a lone {yhwh} stays small-caps Adonai (ruling 49). Amends 9 only in how the pair is encoded.

Origin: Phase 0 tooling · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 83

One id scheme for every Greek lemma, NT and LXX: the Strong's number (G3586) where Strong's has the lemma, otherwise a project id in the reserved range G90001+, assigned once from data/greek-lemma-registry.json. The registry is append-only: an id never changes and is never reused. Strong's and MorphGNT data stay in the tool layer (CC-BY-SA); the ids themselves are published. Reason: Strong's covers New Testament vocabulary, so most LXX-only lemmas would otherwise have no id and the concordance would split by corpus.

Origin: Phase 0 tooling · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 84

First1KGreek (nathans/lxx-swete) has no text for Ecclesiastes (nor Judges A or the second Tobit). D2 option (c) applies to them: own transcription from the archive.org scans of Swete (public domain), plate-read, done when the book is reached (Ecclesiastes is Phase 7). Not done in Phase 0.

Origin: Phase 0 tooling · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 85

Swete's lettered verses and non-numeric chapters are kept as printed. In the chapter format a verse label is digits plus an optional lowercase letter (\v 24a), ordered as the source file orders them. A chapter that is not a number (Esther's prologue, an Odes chapter label) takes a reserved lowercase file name (Esth/prologue.md). Letters never change the count of verses the validator expects: it compares labels as printed.

Origin: Phase 0 tooling · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 86

Ruling 72 is fixed by the Genesis 5 translation: "Adam" begins at 5:3, the first verse where אָדָם can only be a name. 5:1a prints "human" (a crux, ruling 1; LXX ἀνθρώπων) and 5:2 "called their name Human." Before 5:3 the anarthrous אָדָם that OSHB tags as the name (H121: 3:17, 4:25) is read as the common noun, and ruling 11 applies to it ("man" where the woman is in the verse or the next). The H121 tag is kept on the source token; its home gloss is "Adam."

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 87

In ruling 11, "the verse or the next" is literal: it crosses a chapter break and a section mark (3:24 "the man," because 4:1 names Eve).

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 88

הֵן is the short form of הִנֵּה, one deictic in two spellings; both are "look," declared as a pair (95). Its conditional use ("if," Jer 3:1; Aramaic הֵן) is a split by construction when reached.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 89

חֵטְא, חָטָא and חַטָּאת are one family under "sin," declared (95). חַטָּאת splits by construction (20): "sin offering" as the priestly sacrifice (Lev 4–6), "sin" elsewhere.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 90

The qal of יָלַד with a male subject (4:18; 10:8–26; 22:23) stays "bore," with the standing note: the strangeness is the Hebrew's, and the qal/hiphil difference ("bore" / "produced") stays visible between Gen 4/10 and Gen 5/11.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 91

Numbers keep the Hebrew order, with its conjunctions and repeated nouns ("thirty and a hundred years," "nine hundred years and thirty years"); teens as English teens. The WPRB gives the sums in figures.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 92

Ruling 38 holds with the article: הָאֱלֹהִים without singular agreement in the clause is "the elohim," lowercase, in the WPB and (by the WPRB guide's divine-names table) the WPRB (5:22, 24; 6:2, 4, 9). Anarthrous כֵּאלֹהִים is "like elohim" in both.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 93

Clause added to ruling 1: a stranger reading that would settle a doctrine (guide §1.4) yields to the collocation (3) and the chain (37); the stranger reading goes in the decision note (46). First case: 2:8 מִקֶּדֶם "in the east," not "from of old."

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 94

עָרוֹם "nude" (2:25), עָרוּם "shrewd" (3:1), עֵירֹם "naked" (3:7, 10–11): the rhyme carries the pun (24), and the switch to "naked" marks the change of word.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 95

Reverse concordance (guide §3 rule 2) admits declared pairs: words of one root (verb / noun / participle: "rule," "knowing," "seed," "swarm"), one particle in two spellings (88), one family (89), or a verb/noun homograph from different roots ("plant" נָטַע / עֵשֶׂב). A pair shares English only when the lexicon declares it (data/declared-pairs.json); the clash check skips declared pairs and flags every other.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 96

יָשַׁב keeps "dwell" by frequency (33). שָׁכַן is "tent" (qal) and "make tent" (hiphil), which keeps the sanctuary link (מִשְׁכָּן; Exod 25:8; John 1:14 ἐσκήνωσεν).

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 97

עֵת takes "time" by frequency (33); פַּעַם is "turn," הַפַּעַם "this turn" (2:23; 29:34–35).

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 98

WPRB: the softened table adds producings → family history, nude → naked, bdellium → resin. "Living soul" holds in the WPRB (mechanical rule 4), so Gen 1:20, 24, 30 are corrected. "Serve" (עָבַד of the ground) may soften to "work" (wording only).

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 99

The hiding field is fixed as a set (44): סָתַר "hide," חָבָא "take cover," כָּחַד "conceal"; צָפַן, טָמַן, עָלַם are fixed with the set when first reached.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 100

חִדֶּקֶל is "Tigris" in the WPB as in the WPRB: the familiar English form (18); the Hebrew form goes in the names table.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 101

נחם is split by stem (20): piel "comfort" (5:29), niphal "be sorry" (6:6–7), so the root shared by Noah's naming and the flood's cause stays visible.

Origin: Gen 2–5 shakedown · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 102

Poetry is written one colon per line, each line beginning with a level code: \q1 (flush), \q2 (indented one step), \q3 (two steps). A prose lead-in stays on the \v line (\v 25 And he said,) and the colons follow on \q lines; a verse that is all poetry begins \v 6 \q1 …. The level is the colon's place in its line-group: the first colon of a group is \q1, the second and a third are \q2 (a third may be \q3 where the Hebrew steps down again), and a new group begins again with \q1. This replaces the inline / colon break of ruling 78 (its authoring clause only; one colon per line and the indented later cola stand), and the validator rejects a / in a verse. Exports: USFM \q1 / \q2 / \q3; plain text an em-space per level beyond the first; the site indents by level.

Origin: Site build (Gen 4, 9) · Adopted 2026-10-01 · Amendeds 78

Ruling 103

עַד splits by construction (20). In a range opened by מִן ("from X to Y") it is "to" (6:7; 7:23). Elsewhere in space it is "as far as." In time it keeps the home gloss "until." The range use is declared, so "to" for עַד does not clash with אֶל in the concordance check.

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 104

הָיָה with לְ of the result is "become," a split by construction (20): "became a living soul" (2:7), "become a flood" (9:15). "Be" stays the home gloss everywhere else.

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 105

Two declared pairs (95). (a) אוֹר "light" (n.) and קָלַל "be light" (qal; 8:8, 11) are a homograph from different roots; קָלַל keeps "be light / make light of," which carries the weight wordplay (8:21; 12:3). (b) A new class, split by object: פָּקַח is "open" only of eyes and ears (3:5, 7; 21:19); פָּתַח is "open" for everything else (7:11; 8:6). The two never take the same object, so the reader cannot confuse them; a note at each word's first use names the pair. A split by object is declared only where the objects are disjoint across the whole corpus; the first shared object ends it.

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 106

WPRB softened-gloss table (98) adds תֵּבָה box → ark (Gen 6–9; Exod 2:3, 5) and עֹלָה ascent → burnt offering. The WPB keeps "box" and "ascent."

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 107

Where אֱלֹהִים has no agreeing verb in its clause but refers to a speaker who is Elohim or stands in apposition to a singular divine name, the agreement is by reference and the capital is printed (9): 9:6, 16, 26. Rulings 38 and 92 cover only an open sense with no such referent (6:2, 4, 9, 11). The lining of 9:6 and 9:25–27 under 81(b) is confirmed.

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 108

PLAN §3's unit becomes a sealed-packet run (scripts/packet.py) of up to 3 chapters per translator agent, all from one book; a long chapter (over ~40 verses) runs alone or by halves. The measured ceiling was 4 (peak context 289K on Gen 6–9); Wilson chose 3 for headroom.

Origin: Gen 6–9 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 109

Declared as one-root pairs (95): בָּרַךְ "bless" / בְּרָכָה "blessing"; לָבַן "brick" (v.) / לְבֵנָה "brick"; שָׂרַף "burn" / שְׂרֵפָה "burning"; זָמַם "scheme" (v.) / מְזִמָּה "scheme"; גָּדוֹל "great" / גָּדַל "be great, make great"; רָכַשׁ "gain" / רְכוּשׁ "gains."

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 110

Where two different Hebrew names share one familiar English form, the first in canonical order keeps it and the second takes a distinguishing spelling that stays recognisable, named in a note at its first occurrence and in the names table. The city חָרָן is "Harran" (Everett Fox's form); Abram's brother הָרָן stays "Haran." Shelah (שֶׁלַח H7974, 10:24; שֵׁלָה H7956, 38:5) is ruled the same way when Gen 38 is reached.

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 111

בָּבֶל is "Babylon" in every book, Gen 10–11 included, WPB and WPRB: the city of the tower is the city of the exile, and one name shows it. "Babel" (KJV, RSV) and the בָּלַל pun go to the notes at 10:10 and 11:9.

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01 (Wilson, against the recommendation to keep "Babel" in Gen 10–11)

Ruling 112

The great-tree field is fixed as a set (44): אֵלוֹן "terebinth" (Moreh 12:6; Mamre 13:18; 18:1) and אֵלָה "terebinth," declared as one family (95); אַלּוֹן "oak" (35:8 Allon-bacuth; Isa 6:13 has both).

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 113

(a) Ruling 104's "become" applies only to a לְ of result. A לְ of use or function keeps "be": "the brick was to them for stone" (11:3). (b) שִׁפְחָה is printed "maid," provisional with a D note, until it is ruled at Gen 16 (76).

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 114

Where the source marks sound, ruling 24 may break a chain (2) inside a unit, with a D note naming the home gloss and where it stands: 11:9 "made babble" for בָּלַל, with "mix" at 11:7.

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 115

(a) דָּבָר is "word" throughout; no word/thing split for now ("after these words, the word of Adonai was," 15:1). Revisit only if a chapter forces it. (b) In a genealogy, a son whose name is a land prints as the land under its familiar English (18): Egypt (מִצְרַיִם), Assyria (אַשּׁוּר); "Mizraim," "Asshur" go in the names table.

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 116

A clash the concordance check finds only because two glosses share English letters, with no shared sense, is declared (data/declared-pairs.json, reason "false clash") rather than re-glossed: an idiom against a noun (תַּחַת "in place of" / מָקוֹם "place"), a name against a verb (Put / שׂוּם "put"), a phrasal verb against its head (לָבַשׁ "put on" of clothing / שׂוּם "put"), an interjection against a verb (הָבָה "up" / עָלָה "go up").

Origin: Gen 10–12 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 117

Gen 10:11 יָצָא אַשּׁוּר: אַשּׁוּר is the subject (LXX, Vulgate, Onkelos, Rashi; Alter, von Rad), printed "Assyria" under 115b: "From that land Assyria went out and built Nineveh." The Nimrod reading (RSV; Mic 5:5) is kept in the note. Reverses the translator's choice.

Origin: Gen 10–12 blind read · Adopted 2026-10-01 (Wilson)

Ruling 118

Declared as one-root pairs (95): רָעָה / רֹעֶה "shepherd"; רִיב / מְרִיבָה "quarrel, quarreling"; יָמִין / יָמַן "right, go right"; שְׂמֹאל / שָׂמַאל "left, go left"; אָהַל / אֹהֶל "move tent, tent" (with שָׁכַן, 96); חָלַק / חֵלֶק "portion"; יָלַד / יָלִיד "born, born one"; גּוּר / גֵּר "sojourn, sojourner"; חֹשֶׁךְ / חֲשֵׁכָה "darkness"; כָּבֵד / כָּבֵד "be heavy, heavy." חַטָּא "sinners" joins the "sin" family (89).

Origin: Gen 13–15 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 119

Declared as false clashes (116): שָׁאַר "be left" / the left hand; נָבַט "look" (verb) / הִנֵּה "look" (interjection); מַיִם "waters" / מַשְׁקֶה "watering"; יָטַב "be well" / בְּאֵר "well"; אַיִן "there is none" / אַל "not" (two negative particles).

Origin: Gen 13–15 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 120

Splits (20): רוּם by stem, qal "be high," hiphil "make high" (14:22 "I have made high my hand"); עֶלְיוֹן by construction, "Elyon" as a divine name (14:18–22), "upper" as an adjective; לִפְנֵי of time is the preposition "before" (13:10), printed untagged like other function words so that it does not take a gloss from בְּטֶרֶם "before" (טֶרֶם); of place it keeps "before the face of" where English allows.

Origin: Gen 13–15 run · Adopted 2026-10-01

Ruling 121

(a) Hiphil אָמַן is "believe" (15:6); "trust" is left free for בָּטַח. (b) שָׁלוֹם is "peace" (15:15). (c) The place הָם (14:5) is "Hām," apart from Noah's son Ham (110). (d) נָשַׁב is fixed in the hiphil only, "fan" (15:11); the qal is fixed when first reached (Isa 40:7), since "blow" belongs to נָפַח. (e) At 15:1 הָיָה keeps "be": "the word of ADONAI was to Abram."

Origin: Gen 13–15 run · Adopted 2026-10-01