As Peter J. Williams stressed in his lecture “Why I don’t believe in the Septuagint”[1] the revisions of LXX OG and fresh translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek are moving in the direction of formal equivalence[2]. You can see this in this sample where the sentence structure:
LXX OG: καὶ ηὐλόγησεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς λέγων – doesn’t mirror the Hebrew syntax
ויברך אתם אלהים ויאמר להם אלהים
(Yes, those are dual imperatives.) The GV is above all the anti-LXX; it consistently goes out of its way to NEVER follow the LXX for as much as a verse or a sentence. This is obviously not the case for the other Greek translations, which often agree verbally with the LXX.
This does catch me by surprise. I would think either (a) the LXX has a different vorlage here or (b) the LXX authors are so used to semitisms that they sometimes produce them even when they are not in the original.
Do you have a link for Symmachus (and the other Greek translations) on line? Are Field’s old volumes of the Hexapla still the standard hard copy resource? I hear that someone is working on a new edition of the Hexapla but I have not been able to find anything on line or in print.
As is often the case, I stumbled across this while looking into some unrelated matter. I would also be interested in finding handy access to “the Three” something readable[1].