When that time comes: as so often in the Old Testament, “day” (Revised Standard Version) stands for a period longer than 24 hours, and thus Good News Translation has When that time comes…. When it does come, the rich will find themselves in the position they had so often put the poor, namely, they will have their land taken away. In this way their fate will be such a clear example of disaster, of the punishment fitting the crime, that it will become the subject of a song of despair.
The Hebrew does not make it clear who will sing this song, and most English versions retain this vagueness with the word “they” (Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible). Good News Translation is somewhat more explicit with people, that is, people in general. They will at that time mock the rich people who are suffering the same indignities they had once inflicted on others. Another view is that the song is sung by the enemy invaders against the rich people whose property they are plundering. Other scholars believe that the song will be sung by the rich themselves, since it is in the first person. If that is so, it would be a “lament” (New English Bible) rather than a “satire” (New American Bible, Jerusalem Bible) or “taunt” (Revised Standard Version).
In order to translate clearly, each translator will have to decide which of these possibilities seems most convincing in the context, and make his translation according to the meaning he has chosen. Alternative possibilities can be put in footnotes if translators feel they are important enough. It will probably not be necessary to decide exactly who is singing the song, apart from deciding whether it is sung by the people being punished or by some other group that is mocking them. Most English translations take it to be some other group.
Use the story about you as an example of disaster means “tell what has happened to you as an example of the disaster that comes to people who do evil.” Good News Translation can be wrongly understood to mean that telling the story and singing the song are two separate things that will be done; but what is meant is that by singing the song the story is told. If we assume that the song is not sung by the people being punished but by other people, then the singers are pretending that they are the people who have been punished, and they are singing this song in mock despair. Translators may find it somewhat difficult to connect the ideas of mockery and despair. The words of the song show despair, but the whole action of singing the song is intended to mock the people who have been punished.
The song itself has four lines in Revised Standard Version but only three in Good News Translation. This is because the second and third lines have been combined into one in Good News Translation, avoiding a repetition that is somewhat obscure. The general sense of the passage is clear enough, however, and is adequately conveyed by Good News Translation. The people speaking in the song (We) are the rich people whom the Lord is speaking to in verses 3 and 4. This is true whether we understand that they really sing it, or whether it is others who only pretend to be the rich people. Once more, Good News Translation makes the actor explicit (The LORD has taken our land away) and avoids pronouns that have no clear antecedent.
The Hebrew varies in the song between first person plural (Revised Standard Version “We are … ruined” and “our captors”) and first person singular (Revised Standard Version “my people” and “from me”). Since this change sounds unnatural in English, Good News Translation has consistently used the first person plural.
The LORD has taken our land away means of course that the Lord no longer allows these rich evildoers to own the land that had been theirs; instead he has given it to others. This is one point where translators should be careful not to be too literal, or they may imply that the land itself has been moved from one place to another.
The rich people not only suffer the loss of the land they had wrongfully acquired but even see it given … to those who took us captive, that is, to foreign conquerors who have no claim at all to be among the Lord’s people. There is a play on words in Hebrew between “portion” and “divide,” which are both forms of the same root, and perhaps another wordplay between “utterly ruined” and “fields,” which have similar sounds.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on Micah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .