Gen. 17:4 - "you will certainly become father of a crowd of nations"

A book which examines most twentieth century English versions of the Bible: So Many Versions? (SMV), by trinitarian Bible scholars Dr. S. Kubo and Dr. W. Albrecht provides a page and a half of what it calls "peculiar translations" (pp. 108-109) by the NWT. Many of these "peculiar translations" are comparable to translations found in more popular Bibles of Christendom. But these comparable renderings are not criticized at all in SMV's critique of them.

One of these "peculiar translations" is of Gen. 17:4:

Gen. 17:4 - "you will certainly become father of a crowd of nations" vs. RSV's "you shall be the father of a multitude [hamon] of nations." - Good grief!! Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this one is the most nit-picking of all!! (Cf. NAB, NEB - "host of nations".)

The OT Hebrew Hamon here means "noise, tumult, crowd" - Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, #1995, Abingdon Press, 1974 printing.

It is also defined as:

"Sound, murmur, roar, crowd, abundance;.... 1. sound, murmur, rush, roar, esp. sound made by a crowd of people.... 2. tumult, confusion... 3. crowd, multitude" - p. 242, #1995, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 1979.

The New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible also defines Hamon as:

"a sound, murmur, roar, crowd,…., p. 1512, Holman Bible Publishers, 1981.


Nelson's Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament tells us:

"Hamon represents the stirring or agitation of a crowd of people.... Hamon sometimes means a `multitude or crowd' from which a tumult may arise." - p. 256.