SIL Translator’s Notes on Luke 15:23

15:23a

Bring: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Bring indicates here that the servants should go out to the pasture or barn and get the fattened calf.

the fattened calf: Jewish families who had enough money fed one of their young cows much grain so that it would become fat. Then when the family wanted to have a special feast, it would be ready to be killed and eaten. If it is not natural in your language to speak of a fattened calf, you may translate this phrase as:

the fat/best calf
-or-
the calf that we(incl) have been fattening

calf: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as calf refers to the male offspring of a cow. If the idea of killing a calf is unacceptable to your readers, you may be able to use a more general word for a domestic animal. For example:

our fattest/best animal

and kill it: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as kill means here to kill and butcher it. In some languages it may be necessary to supply the implied information that the calf was to be cooked or roasted. For example:

kill/butcher it ⌊and cook/roast it

15:23b

Let us feast and celebrate: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Let us feast is literally “let us eat.” The father was saying that they would all eat a big meal together and rejoice that his son had returned. He probably implied that they would invite people and have a big celebration. In some languages it may be necessary to make some of this implied information explicit. For example:

Let us have a feast to celebrate ⌊my son’s return

celebrate: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as celebrate literally means “make merry.” It refers here to enjoying oneself by eating a good meal. Another way to translate celebrate here is:

we will enjoy ourselves
-or-
we will be happy together

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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