When: the relationship between the first proposition and what follows is made clearer in Good News Translation by using “so that” after the first clause, rather than introducing the verse with When. New English Bible joins the two parts with “… until….” The result of the cutting off of the food supply will be a scarcity of flour for making bread, so that one oven will serve for ten families.

Break your staff of bread: this is a figure of speech for famine (compare Psa 105.16). There are many ways in which this may be expressed in the languages of the world; for example, “I will send great hunger,” or “I will give you no food,” or “I will deprive you of things to eat.” Good News Translation approaches the same meaning with “I will cut off your food supply.”

Ten women shall bake your bread in one oven: instead of using the simple future tense, it may be better to say “ten women will be able to use a single oven for baking bread” or “one oven will be enough to serve ten families.” This is the result of the famine. There will be so little bread that one oven would serve ten different families. Normally each family had its own oven, but the famine would reduce the need by one tenth. In some languages this may have to be made explicit by saying something like “there will be so little bread that one oven will be enough for ten women to cook in.” On the word for oven, see 2.4.

Shall deliver your bread again by weight: the subject here is the women who were responsible for giving out the bread. There will be so little that they will have to measure out the small quantities to each recipient. Compare Ezekiel 4.16-17.

It may be difficult for translators to see why the Revised Standard Version rendering includes the word again in this phrase. The idea is archaic English for “in return.” They put the flour into a common loaf and then get it back “again.” Some other languages also have special expressions for this idea, but in many languages again may be ignored.

Eat, and not be satisfied: this is the opposite of “eat your fill” in 25.19. It is intended to highlight the desperate situation in which the disobedient Israelites will find themselves.

Quoted with permission from Péter-Contesse, René and Ellington, John. A Handbook on Leviticus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1990. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .