And again He said to him: "Look into the midst of the sea and the boundary of the river, and see that which is within the sand, and count if you are able to count them; and in like manner shall your seed be – those who go down into Sheol at the resurrection of the dead."
1 Meqabyan (also known as 1 Ethiopian Maccabees and 1 Ethiopic Maccabees) is canonical scripture for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. While “Meqabyan” is the Ge’ez equivalent of “Maccabees,” the content is completely different from 1 Maccabees. The only complete copies of 1 Meqabyan are available in Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic), here used with permission by the Bible Society of Ethiopia.
The translation into English was provided by Haileyesus Woldemariam (UBS).
The Greek, Ge’ez, and Latin that is translated as “resurrection” in English is translated in Chicahuaxtla Triqui and Pohnpeian as “live-up” (i.e. return to life) (source: Reiling / Swellengrebel) and in Iloko as panagungar: a term that stems “from the word ‘agungar,’ an agricultural term used to describe the coming back to life of a plant which was wilting but which has been watered by the farmer, or of a bulb which was apparently dead but grows again.” (Source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )
Likewise, in Matumbiyu’ya carries the meaning of “raise from the dead, resuscitate, come back from near death” and is used for dry plants that come back to life when you water them or sick children who revive after being healed. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
In Estado de México Otomi, it is translated as “people will be raised from the dead,” in Teutila Cuicatec as “the dead having to come to life again,” in San Mateo del Mar Huave as “arose from the grave” (source: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), and in Kriol as gidap laibala brom dedbala or “get up alive from the dead” (source: Sam Freney in this article .)
The Hebrew, Latin, Ge’ez and Greek that is often translated in English as “Hades” or “Sheol” is translated in the German Luther Bible 2017 (and pre-1912) as Totenreich or “realm (or: kingdom) of the dead” in these verses. (Source: Jost Zetzsche)
The Greek, Ge’ez, and Hebrew that is translated as “as numerous as the sand on the seashore” or “as numerous as the sand by the sea” in English is translated in Bauzi as “as many like the tree flowers of the jungle” (source: David Briley in Kroneman 2004, p. 539), in Afar it’s translated as mari mangah arrooqih gide akkuk yeneeniih: “are as numerous as gravel” or loowo sinni: “not countable” (source: Loren Bliese), in Angal Heneng as “like the hairs on a dog” (Source: Deibler / Taylor 1977, p. 1077), and in Copainalá Zoque as “their number is like ants” (source: John Beekman in Notes on Translation, March 1965, p. 2ff.).
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