“Kiss the Son” in the Second Psalm

I am told that he also finds fault with the way I translated a phrase in the Second Psalm. In the Latin it reads, “Learn discipline”; in the Hebrew it is written Nescu Bar. In my commentary I gave it as “Adore the Son,” and then, when I translated the whole Psalter into Latin, as if I had forgotten my earlier explanation, I put “Worship purely.” No one can deny, of course, that these renderings contradict each other. And we must forgive him for not knowing the Hebrew text, when he is so often at a loss even in Latin. Nescu, translated literally, is “Kiss.” I did not want to give an unpleasant rendering, and preferring to follow the sense, I gave the word “Worship.” For those who worship tend to kiss their hands and bare their heads, as we see in the case of Job, who declares that he has never done either of these things, and says: “If I looked at the sun when it shone, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart rejoiced in secret and I kissed my hand with my mouth, which is a very great wrongdoing, and a lie against the most high God.” The Hebrews, in the way peculiar to their language, use this word “kiss” for adoration; and so I translated according to the usage of those whose language I was dealing with. [a]

The word Bar, however, has several meanings in Hebrew. It means “son,” as in the names Barjona (son of a dove), Bartholomew (son of Tholomaeus), Bartimaeus, Barjesus, and Barabbas. It also means “wheat,” and “a sheaf of grain,” and “chosen,” and “pure.” What sin have I committed, then, when a word is so uncertain in meaning, if I have rendered it differently in different places? Or if, after taking the sense “Worship the Son” in my commentary, where there is more freedom for discussion, I said “Worship purely” or “in a chosen way” in my version of the Bible itself, so that I would not be thought to translate on a whim, or give the Jews grounds for quibbling? This last rendering, moreover, is that of Aquila and Symmachus. And I cannot see that the faith of the church is harmed when the reader is shown how many different ways the Jews translate a verse.