pray / prayer

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The Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “pray” (or “prayer”) in English is often translated as “talking with God” (Central Pame, Tzeltal, Chol, Chimborazo Highland Quichua, Shipibo-Conibo, Kaqchikel, Tepeuxila Cuicatec, Copainalá Zoque, Central Tarahumara).

Other solutions include:

  • “beg” or “ask,” (full expression: “ask with one’s heart coming out,” which leaves out selfish praying, for asking with the heart out leaves no place for self to hide) (Tzotzil)
  • “cause God to know” (Huichol)
  • “raise up one’s words to God” (implying an element of worship, as well as communication) (Miskito, Lacandon) (source of this and all above: Bratcher / Nida)
  • “speak to God” (Shilluk) (source: Nida 1964, p. 237)
  • “talk together with Great Above One (=God)” (Mairasi) (source: Enggavoter, 2004)
  • “call to one’s Father” (San Blas Kuna) (source: Claudio and Marvel Iglesias in The Bible Translator 1951, p. 85ff. )
  • “beg” (waan) (Ik). Terrill Schrock (in Wycliffe Bible Translators 2016, p. 93) explains (click or tap here to read more):

    What do begging and praying have to do with each other? Do you beg when you pray? Do I?

    “The Ik word for ‘visitor’ is waanam, which means ‘begging person.’ Do you beg when you go visiting? The Ik do. Maybe you don’t beg, but maybe when you visit someone, you are looking for something. Maybe it’s just a listening ear.

    When the Ik hear that [my wife] Amber and I are planning trip to this or that place for a certain amount of time, the letters and lists start coming. As the days dwindle before our departure, the little stack of guests grows. ‘Please, sir, remember me for the allowing: shoes, jacket (rainproof), watch, box, trousers, pens, and money for the children. Thank you, sir, for your assistance.’

    “A few people come by just to greet us or spend bit of time with us. Another precious few will occasionally confide in us about their problems without asking for anything more than a listening ear. I love that.

    “The other day I was in our spare bedroom praying my list of requests to God — a nice list covering most areas of my life, certainly all the points of anxiety. Then it hit me: Does God want my list, or does he want my relationship?

    “I decided to try something. Instead of reading off my list of requests to God, I just talk to him about my issues without any expectation of how he should respond. I make it more about our relationship than my list, because if our personhood is like God’s personhood, then maybe God prefers our confidence and time to our lists, letters, and enumerations.”

In Luang it is translated with different shades of meaning (click or tap here to read more):

  • For Acts 1:14, 20:36, 21:5: kola ttieru-yawur nehla — “hold the waist and hug the neck.” (“This is the more general term for prayer and often refers to worship in prayer as opposed to petition. The Luang people spend the majority of their prayers worshiping rather than petitioning, which explains why this term often is used generically for prayer.”)
  • For Acts 28:9: sumbiani — “pray.” (“This term is also used generically for ‘prayer’. When praying is referred to several times in close proximity, it serves as a variation for kola ttieru-yawur nehla, in keeping with Luang discourse style. It is also used when a prayer is made up of many requests.”)
  • For Acts 8:15, 12:5: polu-waka — “call-ask.” (“This is a term for petition that is used especially when the need is very intense.”)

Source: Kathy Taber in Notes on Translation 1/1999, p. 9-16.

See also Nehemiah’s prayer (image).

addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.

Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)

In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

complete verse (1 Kings 8:38)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of 1 Kings 8:38:

  • Kupsabiny: “oh, God, listen to all the prayers of your people. If any person is faced with pain and prays while lifting his hands towards this house of yours,” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “please hear their prayers. If anyone among Your people, the Israelites, feeling remorse in their hearts, lifting their hands toward this temple in prayer,” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “and if there is one among them (who)-will-pray or (who)-will-request from you, listen-to them. If they acknowledge that because of their sins these sufferings came to them, and they will-pray raising-up their hands, facing this temple,” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “when your Israeli people earnestly plead with you knowing that they are suffering because they have sinned, and if they stretch out their arms toward this temple and pray,” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on 1 Kings 8:38

Whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by any man or by all thy people Israel: For whatever see the comments on the previous verse. Regarding the nouns prayer and supplication, see the comments on verse 28.

Any man is not intended to exclude women and may thus be translated “any individual” (New Jerusalem Bible, New Revised Standard Version), “any person,” or “anyone.”

The Septuagint does not have the words or by all thy people Israel, and this shorter text is followed by New Jerusalem Bible, De Vries, and Gray. New American Bible includes the words “of your entire people Israel” within square brackets to indicate doubt that they belong to the earliest form of the Hebrew text. However, the majority of modern translations follow the Masoretic Text here, and that is also the recommendation of this Handbook. But having said that, just what does the Masoretic Text mean? The text may be understood as referring to two subjects as in Revised Standard Version (also New Revised Standard Version): any man and all thy people Israel. Or it may refer to “any person among all Your people Israel” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh; similarly Good News Translation). The difference is not really significant as long as by all thy people Israel is understood in terms of individual prayer and not collective or group prayer.

Each knowing the affliction of his own heart: Affliction renders the same Hebrew noun translated “plague” in verse 37. The precise meaning of this clause is not clear. The sense appears to be that each person will recognize that his own suffering is the result of God’s punishment of his sin.

Other interpreters, however, have suggested that the meaning of the Hebrew noun for affliction in this context is related to the use of the verb from the same root in 1 Sam 10.26, where it is said that God “touched” the hearts of the men of valor. In this case heart means “conscience,” and the whole clause means something like “because God will through his touching awaken the consciousness of sin.” Compare New American Bible: “if then any one [of your entire people Israel] has remorse of conscience.”

Stretching out his hands toward this house: Hands is literally “palms” as in verse 22. The stretching out of the palms toward the Temple was a gesture showing that the person doing this understood that the source of his help was God who was thought to live in the Temple.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator’s Notes on 1 Kings 8:38

8:38a then may whatever prayer or petition Your people Israel make—

someone from your people Israel may pray to you and ask for mercy.
-or-
One of your people, one of the Israelites, may then pray to you and beg you for help/mercy.

8:38b each knowing his own afflictions

They will know in their own heart the pain of their sufferings.
-or-
He or she may experience/feel deep suffering

8:38c and spreading out his hands toward this temple—

They will stretch their hands out in prayer toward this ⌊your (sing) ⌋ house.
-or-
and lift up hands in prayer toward this temple.

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