![]() I suspect that it is mostly Americans that use the " three score and ten years" form, subconsciously paralleling Lincoln's " four score and seven years", while the rest of the world uses the King James translation with the embedded "years". Meanwhile, the famous Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln begins with:įour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. But few notice that, by this pious biblical reference, Lincoln is also making a crucial substantive point: the deed he is about to recount, he intimates. ![]() The translators of the Authorized Version (KJV) must have decided to use the more poetic " three score years and ten" instead. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. "šiḇʿîm" has "שֶׁבַע" (šeḇaʿ) as its root, and that simply means "seven", again with no use of "score". Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The much older Latin Vulgate has the "70 years" as: "septuaginta anni", where the first word is clearly "70" without the use of "score". The days of our years are threescore years and ten and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. All right, well, this in case you're wondering, means 87 years. All right, so, Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ![]() Psalm 90:10 (King James Version) - Original Hebrew. Well, let's read it line by line and see what he's really saying. ![]()
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