God’s actions at Mount Sinai are three:
• coming down onto the mountain
• speaking with the Israelites from heaven
• giving them good laws
Good News Translation restructures the verse in order to present the events logically and simply.
Thou didst come down upon Mount Sinai, and speak with them from heaven: The Hebrew begins the verse by drawing attention to Mount Sinai. This is the mountain where God came down to speak to the Israelites during their escape from their life of slavery in Egypt. Although the identity of the mountain is not known for sure, it is traditionally thought to be a mountain that is today called Jebel Musa and that is located in the south-central part of the Sinai Desert. Translations for people who are not familiar with mountains will need to use modifiers to describe a “great hill” or “very high place” or perhaps a borrowed word. Heaven refers to God’s dwelling place.
The chronology of these two clauses seems to be contradictory: God descends upon Mount Sinai and then he speaks to the people of Israel from heaven. Many versions retain the syntax of the Hebrew text, but Good News Translation restructures it according to the logical sequence of events (also Contemporary English Version, Bible en français courant, Parole de Vie). However, the Hebrew text indicates that God came down to meet the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, but spoke to them from heaven, that is, “from on high.” Good News Translation omits from where God spoke and loses the strong contrast expressed in the Hebrew text between heaven from where God spoke to the people and the mountain around which they were gathered. The Handbook recommends that the Hebrew text be followed as Revised Standard Version has done.
Give them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments: The various terms that are used for what was given by God at Mount Sinai represent the vocabulary of Deuteronomy (see Deut 30.10). They are not used consistently either in Deuteronomy or in the Bible as a whole. All together they refer to the whole Law (see the comments at Ezra 7.10-11 and Neh 1.7). The same three words are found here as in Neh 1.7: ordinances (mishpat in Hebrew), statutes (choq), and commandments (mitswah). Here a fourth term is added, which is laws (torah). The root meanings of the terms are as follows:
• ordinances are judgments or legal decisions
• statutes are obligations that are prescribed
• commandments are direct orders
• laws are instruction
Unlike other references to these terms, here they are described by adjectives. The first two words have the adjectives right and true respectively. The single adjective good applies to both statutes and commandments. Right expresses the meaning of “straight” or “just,” true describes what is faithful and reliable, while good indicates value or perfection (so Bible en français courant).
Contemporary Chinese Bible translates “just decisions and laws that express truth, excellent precepts and commandments.” Good News Translation combines the four different legal terms into a pair of well-known words that specify the two basic distinctions that are expressed by the four Hebrew terms, namely commands and instruction. This is a good model to follow when using only two terms. New International Version takes the first two terms together with the first two adjectives as “regulations and laws that are just and right,” and then takes the second two terms together with the third adjective as “decrees and commands that are good.” This creates a form of poetic parallelism.
Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Nehemiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .