The LORD renders the Hebrew personal name for God, which is YHWH. Like the Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, many other English translations render this name as “LORD,” printed in upper case letters. But they use “Lord” when the Hebrew has ʾadonai, which means “Lord” or “Master.” Already before the Christian era, the Jews avoided pronouncing the proper name of God, YHWH (a positive taboo). Instead, they would pronounce the Hebrew title ʾadonai.
If necessary, in some languages it is legitimate to add a possessive pronoun to LORD, for example, “my LORD” or “their LORD” (depending on the context), although this was never done with the personal name of God in Hebrew. This may be obligatory especially in languages that have an inclusive/exclusive reference system. Otherwise it would appear that the person speaking did not consider God to be his or her own God.
Some translations simply transcribe the Hebrew name YHWH as “Yahweh” (for example, New Jerusalem Bible and La Bible de Jérusalem: Nouvelle édition revue et corrigée, since it is a proper noun. However, the pronunciation of this name in ancient times is uncertain, so it is not clear what vowels should be used to spell the name in languages today.
Other translations make an effort to render the supposed meaning of this name; for example, Nouvelle version Segond révisée has “The Eternal [One].” (The Hebrew name is an early form of the verb hayah [“to be”] in the third person singular.) Such renderings replace a personal name by an impersonal abstraction, and this may give a wrong impression in the target language.
In some cultures there may be a familiar personal, tribal or national name for the supreme Deity that is distinct from the generic term for “god” but quite similar in usage to YHWH (for example, Chauta in Chewa, a major Bantu language of south-central Africa). In such cases it may be wise to adopt this name as the equivalent for YHWH and give a full explanation of the biblical name in the glossary or in the introduction to the Old Testament (or Genesis).
The LORD spoke to Moses: This expression, or something very similar, is repeated again and again in Numbers to underscore the divine origin of all the commands and directions that Moses gave to the people of Israel. This repetition should be retained in a translation if possible, but in some cases, depending on the nature of the translation, this phrase may have to be condensed or even omitted for stylistic reasons. Good News Translation moves this expression to the middle of the sentence for a more natural reading. Other languages may prefer a different position also.
In the wilderness of Sinai: The Hebrew word for wilderness (midbar) refers to a dry and barren, uncultivated region where there may be some vegetation. Its main component of meaning is that it is a desolate area where no humans settle. (Nomads with flocks can inhabit the region, as Moses did when he first fled from Egypt [see Exo 2.15-17].) The target language term chosen should not suggest a desert of sand with dunes and little else. Sinai is the name of a vast region in today’s Sinai Peninsula to the northeast of Egypt and south of Palestine (Canaan). It is not just a mountain, so Good News Translation says “the Sinai Desert.” If the word “Desert” is misleading, translators may say “the Sinai Wilderness.”
In the tent of meeting: Even at the beginning of this book, the tent of meeting is already considered known to the reader. It is the portable sanctuary of the people of Israel, described in Exo 25–30, in which God met with Moses to communicate to his will (see Exo 33.7-11) and revealed himself to his people. Good News Translation calls this sanctuary “the Tent of his [the LORD’s] presence,” which highlights these facts and may provide a better model for most languages. Alternative renderings are “the tent where the LORD is,” “the tent where the LORD appears,” and “the holy tent.” Translators should be consistent in their rendering of this expression. There may be an equivalent in the target language that stems from ancient ancestral religious practices. But such a term should be used only if it has already been widely accepted among the churches. The word tent may be difficult to translate in some languages. It may be rendered “temporary [or, portable] shelter” or “house made of skins.” The tent of meeting is also called “the tabernacle of the testimony” in 1.50 (see the comments there). It would be helpful to distinguish these two expressions, which Good News Translation does not do.
On the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt: God spoke to Moses approximately thirteen months after the Israelites had left Egypt, that is, after the Exodus, a major temporal point of reference in the history of Israel, equivalent to the B.C./A.D. distinction in classical Christian chronology. This speech took place one month after the completion of the Tent of Meeting (see Exo 40.17). The second month in the Hebrew calendar is Ziv, which corresponds to mid-April to mid-May. The Hebrew word for month (chodesh) is literally “new moon.” It refers to a lunar month, which includes roughly 29.5 days. Some languages may have a distinct term for this, or even a traditional term for the lunar month that now refers to the modern calendrical month, for example, Chewa has mwezi (literally “moon”). Good News Translation makes it explicit that the pronoun they refers to “the people of Israel.”
Good News Translation has reversed the order of the phrases in this verse, and as a result, it is not clear that the adverb “there” refers to “the Sinai Desert.” Rather than reversing the order of the phrases, translators should first consider rendering them in their existing order but in separate sentences. This will ensure that not too much new information is packed into a single sentence, though languages differ in how much is natural or normal in this respect. A model that uses several sentences for this verse is:
• The LORD spoke to Moses in the Tent of his presence in the Sinai Wilderness. This was on the first day of the second month in the second year after the Israelites had left Egypt. He said….
Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .