the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Its
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or ITS . It is well known that this word occurs but once in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] , Leviticus 25:5 , and that even there it is due to subsequent printers, the word in 1611 being ‘it’ ‘that which groweth of it owne accord.’ The use of ‘It’ for ‘its’ is well seen in Shaks. King John , ii. i. 160.
‘Go to it grandam, child:
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.’
The form ‘its’ was only beginning to come into use about 1611. The usual substitutes in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] are ‘his’ and ‘thereof.’ Thus Matthew 6:33 ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,’ where Tindale has ‘the rightwisnes thereof’ (RV [Note: Revised Version.] takes the pronoun to be masculine, referring to God, not kingdom, and retains ‘his’).
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Its'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/i/its.html. 1909.
