In his elegant review of Robert Alter’s English-language version of the Hebrew Bible, and in his extensive interactions with Alter’s word choices, Hillel Halkin has provided Mosaic readers with invaluable access to this new and important literary achievement. While generally appreciative of Alter’s guiding principles—with the exception of a significant caveat at the very end of his essay—Halkin’s word-by-word analysis of some of Alter’s renderings demonstrates that, even by the translator’s self-imposed standards, there is room for improvement.