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At the time when our Lord was on the earth, the sacred writings of the Jews were collected in two different forms. The Palestinian collection, so called, was written in the Hebrew language, and the Alexandrian collection, called the Septuagint, in the Greek.
It is a speech borrowed from reprobate silver which is not refined from dross, and so is the word used by the Septuagint, Isa. i. 22, τὸ ἀργύριον ἰμῶν ἀδόκιμον “Thy silver is become dross.” The Apostle therefore sets himself to the study of mortification, lest, saith he, when I have been refining and purifying others, I myself be found to be drossy silver.
And the other word translated ordained, when applied to an assembly by the Septuagint, is used for a judgment of authority, as, "And what was decreed against her," Esth. ii. 1; and so a word derived from it, signifies a decree, Dan. iv. 14, 21.
The Jews also studied philosophy, and began to talk in the catchwords of philosophy, and then to re-interpret their Scriptures according to the ideas of philosophy. The Septuagint translation of the Pentateuch was to the cultured Gentile an account in rather bald and impure Greek of the history of a family which grew into a petty nation, and of their tribal and national laws.
The most celebrated is that in Isaiah VII, 14, which predicts that a virgin shall bear a son, Emmanuel, but the word, Al-mah, which the Septuagint rendered "virgin" means in Hebrew a young woman, and this passage merely deals with the approaching birth of a son to the king or the prophet himself.
Because, though the word might happen to occur in the Septuagint, yet, since that is merely a translation, for any of us who occupy a controversial place, that is, who are bound by the responsibilities, or who claim the strict privileges of controversy, the Septuagint has no virtual existence.
Nevertheless, thou hast done even that which was done by the great and inspired legislator, when he beheld an Egyptian tyrannizing over a Hebrew, saving that, in the case present, it was a female, when, says the Septuagint, Percussum Egyptium abscondit sabulo; the meaning whereof I will explain to you another time.
For although we did ourselves promote that work of translation, since ye may read, at the beginning of every Bible, that when some palpable clouds of darkness were thought like to have overshadowed the land, after the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth; yet our appearance, like that of the sun in his strength, instantly dispelled these surmised mists, I say, that although, as therein mentioned, we countenanced the preaching of the gospel, and especially the translation of the Scriptures out of the original sacred tongues; yet nevertheless, we ourselves confess to have found a comfort in consulting them in the original Hebrew, whilk we do not perceive even in the Latin version of the Septuagint, much less in the English traduction."
It may be observed here, however, that of the three forms in which Genesis is handed down to us, the Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, or ancient Greek translation, no two agree in the numbers on which the estimate is founded.