Thy or You

Question

Christian Bibles and prayer books use Thee/Thou and Thy for the Almighty because He is one. In English, of course, thy is the singular form and you the plural. My Jewish study bible uses you throughout and so do books of Jewish prayers. Can you explain this? I do not understand Hebrew but surely the original uses the singular, so why translate it as plural? the belief that G-d is one is fundamental to the faith. Thank you for your time.

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Answers

  1. Whilst it is true that in old English “thy” was the accepted form of writing “you” in the singular, nevertheless, nowadays the universally accepted method of writing “you” in the singular is “you”. It is left to the reader to understand the context of the sentence in order to understand if it is singular of plural.

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