6So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
The Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Greek that are typically translated as “priest” in English (itself deriving from Latin “presbyter” — “elder”) is often translated with a consideration of existing religious traditions. (Click or tap for details)
Bratcher / Nida (1961) say this:
“However, rather than borrow local names for priests, some of which have unwanted connotations, a number of translations have employed descriptive phrases based on certain functions: (1) those describing a ceremonial activity: Pamona uses tadu, the priestess who recites the litanies in which she describes her journey to the upper or under-world to fetch life-spirit for sick people, animals or plants; Batak Toba uses the Arabic malim, ‘Muslim religious teacher;’ ‘one who presents man’s sacrifice to God’ (Bambara, Eastern Maninkakan), ‘one who presents sacrifices’ (Baoulé, Navajo (Dinė)), ‘one who takes the name of the sacrifice’ (Kpelle, and ‘to make a sacrifice go out’ (Hausa); (2) those describing an intermediary function: ‘one who speaks to God’ (Shipibo-Conibo) and ‘spokesman of the people before God’ (Tabasco Chontal).”
In Obolo it is translated as ogwu ngwugwa or “the one who offers sacrifice” (source: Enene Enene), in Mairasi as agam aevar nevwerai: “religious leader” (source: Enggavoter 2004), in Ignaciano as “blesser, one who does ritual as a practice” (using a generic term rather than the otherwise common Spanish loan word sacerdote) (source: Willis Ott in Notes on Translation 88/1982, p. 18ff.), and in Noongar as yakin-kooranyi or “holy worker” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang).
For Guhu-Samane, Ernest Richert (in The Bible Translator, 1965, p. 81ff. ) reports this: “The [local] cult of Poro used to be an all-encompassing religious system that essentially governed all areas of life. (…) For ‘priest’ the term ‘poro father’ would at first seem to be a natural choice. However, several priests of the old cult are still living. Although they no longer function primarily as priests of the old system they still have a substantial influence on the community, and there would be more than a chance that the unqualified term would (in some contexts particularly) be equated with the priest of the poro cult. We learned, then, that the poro fathers would sometimes be called ‘knife men’ in relation to their sacrificial work. The panel was pleased to apply this term to the Jewish priest, and the Christian community has adopted it fully. [Mark 1:44, for instance, now] reads: ‘You must definitely not tell any man of this. But you go show your body to the knife man and do what Moses said about a sacrifice concerning your being healed, and the cause (base of this) will be apparent.'”
For a revision of the 1968 version of the Bible in Khmer Joseph Hong (in: The Bible Translator 1996, 233ff. ) talks about a change in wording for this term:
Bau cha r (បូជាចារ្យ) — The use of this new construction meaning “priest” is maintained to translate the Greek word hiereus. The term “mean sang (មាន សង្ឃ)” used in the old version actually means a “Buddhist monk,” and is felt to be theologically misleading. The Khmer considers the Buddhist monk as a “paddy field of merits,” a reserve of merits to be shared with other people. So a Khmer reader would find unthinkable that the mean sang in the Bible killed animals, the gravest sin for a Buddhist; and what a scandal it would be to say that a mean sang was married, had children, and drank wine.
Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, the Adamawa Fulfulde translation uses the exclusive pronoun, excluding the priest.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of 1 Samuel 21:6:
Kupsabiny: “Then Ahimelech gave those set aside/dedicated loaves to David because there were no other loaves. It was after one week that those loaves were to be removed from before God and be replaced with warm/fresh ones.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “So, since he did not have any bread other than the dedicated bread, that priest gave him the dedicated bread. That bread having been brought from before the LORD was replaced that same day in the same place with hot bread.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “So because there-was-no ordinary bread, the priest gave him the bread which was-offered in the presence of the LORD, which was-taken from the holy table and was-exchanged-for new bread.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “The only bread that the priest had was the sacred bread that had been placed in Yahweh’s presence in the Sacred tent. So the priest gave David some of that bread. On that day the priest had taken those loaves from the table and replaced them with fresh/newly baked loaves.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
So: the common Hebrew conjunction is correctly translated as a logical connector in this context.
Holy bread: see the comment on verse 4. This bread is also called the bread of the Presence, literally “the bread of the face,” that is, bread placed before the face of God. Fresh bread was placed on the table each Sabbath (see Lev 24.5-9). In English translations this is often translated this as “bread of the Presence” (Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New International Version) or “shewbread” (King James Version, New American Bible). Other translations include “the bread of display” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), “the loaves of permanent display” (New Jerusalem Bible), and “the bread of offering” (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). Unless it would be considered something different from the holy bread, the same term should be used here that is used to translate this expression in its other occurrences in the Hebrew text (for example, Exo 25.30; 35.13; Num 4.7; 1 Kgs 7.48) and in the New Testament (Mark 2.26).
Which is removed … on the day it is taken away: though the wording of the Hebrew is somewhat ambiguous, it seems probable that the bread given to David was not the bread on the table at that time, as Revised Standard Version may suggest, but was rather the bread that had recently been removed and replaced by fresh bread, as the law required (so Good News Translation; Revised English Bible and New American Bible are similar to Good News Translation). The passive formulation is removed (Good News Translation “had been removed”) may be rendered actively by saying “which the priests had removed” or something similar. The participle in the Masoretic Text that is translated which is removed is plural. This participle is, however, singular in a Hebrew manuscript from Qumran, and the singular seems to agree better grammatically with the word bread, which is singular in Hebrew. Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament, however, gives a {B} rating to plural of the MT, noting that the word bread is plural in meaning.
Hot bread may be translated as “fresh loaves” (Contemporary English Version) or “freshly baked bread” (Revised English Bible).
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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