Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Matthew — Key Ideas to Explore

A Translator's Voice in the Genealogy

Weymouth's handling of Matthew's opening genealogy (1:1–17) is a microcosm of his method. He standardizes the repetitive structure: 'Abraham was the father of Isaac; Isaac of Jacob; Jacob of Judah and his brothers.' The inclusion of the mothers—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and 'Uriah's widow'—is unusual for early twentieth-century translations and suggests a sensitivity to the women in Jesus' lineage. The three-part summary (1:17) uses the phrase 'Removal to Babylon' rather than 'captivity' or 'exile,' a lexical choice that emphasizes the event as a forced relocation. Weymouth also capitalizes 'JESUS' and 'CHRIST' in the climactic verse (1:16), visually marking the culmination of the list. These details indicate a translator who made deliberate, sometimes unconventional decisions to produce a readable yet precise text.

Idiomatic Renderings of Key Passages

In the Sermon on the Mount and later teachings, Weymouth consistently replaces traditional phrasing with contemporary equivalents. For example, 'in solemn truth I tell you' (18:3, 18:13, 18:18) stands in for the familiar 'verily I say unto you.' The phrase 'the fire of the Ages' (18:8) and 'the Gehenna of fire' (18:9) render the Greek geennan tou pyros with a specificity that avoids the generic 'hell.' Weymouth also clarifies metaphors: 'causes of falling' (18:7) for 'offenses,' and 'the Kingdom of the Heavens' (18:1, 18:23) instead of 'kingdom of heaven.' These choices reflect an effort to make the text accessible to readers unfamiliar with biblical idioms, while retaining the theological weight of the original.

Narrative Flow and Editorial Decisions

The excerpts show Weymouth's attention to narrative continuity. In the birth narrative (1:18–25), he breaks the angel's speech into shorter sentences: 'She will give birth to a Son, and you are to call His name JESUS for He it is who will save His People from their sins.' The use of 'Mark!' (1:23) for 'Behold' is a striking colloquialism. Later, in the discourse on forgiveness (18:21–22), Peter's question and Jesus' reply are rendered with natural dialogue: 'Master, how often shall my brother act wrongly towards me and I forgive him? seven times?' The response, 'I do not say seven times, but seventy times seven times,' retains the hyperbole while modernizing the phrasing. Weymouth also includes a blank verse number (18:11) with an empty bracket, indicating a textual note or omission—a scholarly gesture that acknowledges variant manuscript traditions.

Readers approaching Weymouth's Matthew should attend to the translator's consistent voice: his preference for 'the Heavens' over 'heaven,' his parenthetical clarifications, and his avoidance of archaic pronouns. Comparing a passage here with the same passage in the King James Version reveals how much of the text's tone is shaped by these small but pervasive choices. The edition is best read as a historical artifact of early twentieth-century translation philosophy, not as a replacement for other versions.

Some afternoons I drift back to Weymouth’s Matthew, where the “fire of the Ages” feels less like judgment and more like a slow, patient burn toward understanding. It makes me think of another quiet volume, Spiritual Victories Through the Light of Salvation — Themes and Context, whose pages seem to carry that same steady warmth, a hand held out in the dark. They share a hush, a knowing.