One of the useful features of Bible Gateway is the parallel versions, and if you use it with the Latin Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims, it is useful indeed. Here it is for Psalm 1.
Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit;
Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence.
A quick look at some modern version shows an interesting difference. The modern versions are translated from the Hebrew. Here is the ESV – basically the Old RSV.
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
Scoffers is also rendered “mockers”.
Now the Vulgate Latin for the Psalms is not translated from the Hebrew, but from the old Greek translation, the Septuagint (LXX). This reads:
μακάριοςμακαριος ὃς οὐκ ἐπορεύθη ἐν βουλῇ ἀσεβῶν καὶ ἐν ὁδῷ ἁμαρτωλῶν οὐκ ἔστη καὶ ἐπὶ καθέδραν λοιμῶν οὐκ ἐκάθισεν
And the Hebrew itself reads:
So where does “pestilentiae” come from? Our Hebrew manuscripts are mainly 10th century AD. So was Jerome working from a different Hebrew text?
Well, we can find out. Jerome may have translated the psalter from the LXX, but he also did a translation from the Hebrew. This was helpfully translated by the SPCK: J. M. Harden, Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos Hieronymi, SPCK (1922), online here. And it reads:
Beatus uir, qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in uia peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra derisorum non sedit.
So the Hebrew of Jerome’s day was no different. This is purely an LXX thing.
Now I don’t know a word of Hebrew, so I won’t try and look into that. But I did find a commentary online which discusses this very question here. It looks as if it’s a genuine question, how to render that Hebrew word – used only twice in the Psalms, and with different meanings in each case -, and other ancient translators such as Aquila and Theodotion struggled with it too.
So where does the LXX reading come from? Well, again I know nothing of Septuagintal studies, so I can only speculate. But I don’t think ancient translations were notable, as a rule, for their accuracy. We all remember the preface of Jerome – somewhere! – that says that there were as many versions of the Old Latin bible as there were manuscript copies. So maybe the unknown translator just bodged something in at that point and moved on, never dreaming that we would be talking about it two millennia later and more. It’s an interesting thought.