16. More Calvinistic influence
Divine retribution in the form of punishment was a favorite theme of John Calvin, who was a fan of delivering punishments himself whenever the opportunity beckoned. His influence on the Geneva Bible led to a mistranslation which was repeated by the translators in the King James Version. In Zechariah 14:19, the KJV version reads, “This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.” The use of the word punishment first appeared in the Geneva Bible, and is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word meaning not punishment but to sin. The Bishop’s Bible changed the wording to read the plague of Egypt and all nations.
The translators of the KJV accepted the Geneva Bible version of the verse, which if correctly translated from Hebrew reads, “This shall be the sin of Egypt, and the sin of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles”, clearly an altogether different meaning from the Calvinistic view expressed by the mistranslation. The verse indicates a vengeful and punishing God, a view espoused by Calvin and his followers, but not by the writer of the verse in its original language. Luther’s German bible contained the correct word for sin in German, as did the Latin Vulgate in Latin, but they were not influenced by the Calvinistic views which affected much of the Protestant theology in England at the time.