Fourth, Psalm 19:4: “their voice.”
Fourth, Psalm 19:4: “their voice.”
§ 331. (IV) Ps. 19:4. “The Hebrew manuscripts read ‘Their 
(that is, their ‘line’ or their ‘plumb line’) has gone out into all the earth,’ though the Septuagint translators rendered it 
[“their voice or sound”], and Paul approved of their translation (Rom. 10:18). How is it that Jerome translated it literally from the Hebrew, ‘their sound has gone out,’ so that it is necessary either to rebuke Paul and Jerome or certainly to admit that the source is not pure in this passage? It is likely that 
ought to be read, since 
comes from 
with only one letter added.”
We respond. (1) Genebrardus, in his scholia on Psalm 19, writes: “The Hebrew word indeed means ‘line,’ but the Septuagint translators were looking at the sense.” Jerome in his translation and the apostle in his citation in Rom. 10:18 followed the Septuagint because the doctrine of the apostles is the line, the plumb line, and rule of all doctrines in the Church.
(2) Johannes Isaacus points out that the word 
also means “sound.” However, no examples of this meaning are extant; it is more likely, therefore, that the Septuagint translators repeated that word from the preceding verse.
(3) Not only here but also in many other places in the New Testament, Christ and the apostles quote statements from the Old Testament not according to the wording of the Hebrew text but according to the Septuagint translation, as Jerome teaches (Quaest. super Genes., c. 46). From this, however, one cannot and should not infer that the Hebrew text is not authentic nor that we must go back from the streams to the sources. After all, first, who are we when compared with Christ, the master of Scripture, and with the apostles, who were moved by the immediate inbreathing of the Holy Spirit? Second, though they do not always follow the actual words, nevertheless they do retain the purest sense and intention. Jerome, Epistle 151 ad Algasiam: “Whenever the evangelists and apostles have brought forth testimonies from the Old Testament, one must observe carefully that they have not followed the words but the sense; and whenever the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew, they expressed the Hebrew sense in their speech.” Furthermore, it is one thing to translate Scripture, but it is another to cite a passage from Scripture. Even the teachers of our Church in their disputations draw statements of Scripture from the Latin Vulgate version, yet they do not thereby claim that it is authentic; rather, as necessity demands, they appeal to the Hebrew sources. In addition, the nature of the Greek version today is different from what it formerly was, because that Greek version of the Old Testament that exists today either is not the version of the Septuagint translators or has been corrupted and vitiated in many ways. Finally, they did not quote statements of Scripture from the Greek version for the purpose of claiming that the Hebrew sources were contaminated and muddied, but because the Greek version was at that time the most used and the most widely accepted. Jerome, Quaest. super Genesin: “Observe this in general, that whenever the holy apostles or apostolic men speak to the people, they often use those testimonies that then were widely published among the Gentiles, namely, through the Septuagint translation.”
(4) Paul expressed literally the Hebrew source and the word 
in Gal. 6:16: “upon all who walk by this rule,” etc.
(5) It is apparent from the notes of the Masoretes that at their time this was read as 
. Therefore no suspicion of corruption lies here. After all, the Masoretic notes were written not only before Jerome’s translation but also even before the Septuagint version and, in fact, were written by Ezra and other men of the Great Synagogue, as Buxtorf and other experts of the Hebrew language affirm.