purple

The Greek and Hebrew hat is translated as “purple” in English is translated as “blue-red” in Ojitlán Chinantec (source: M. Larson in Notes on Translation 1970, p. 1ff.) and in Elhomwe (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext). In Silimo it is translated with a local reference: “the colour of the wipegen berry” (source: Buzz and Myrna Maxey ).

In Kasua was a little bit more involved, as Rachel Greco recalls (in The PNG Experience ):

“The Kasua people of Western Province have no word for the color purple. They have words for many other colors: black, red, white, yellow, green, and blue, but not for the color of royalty.

“About nine New Testament passages mention people placing a purple robe on Jesus. The Kasua translation team always wanted to use the word ‘red,’ or keyalo, to describe the robe. Tommy, one of the translation team helpers, disagreed because this is not historically accurate or signifies the royalty of Jesus.

“One of the main rules of translation is that the team must stick to the historical facts when they translate a passage. If they don’t, then how can the readers trust what they’re reading is true? Other questions about truth could bubble in the reader’s minds about the Scriptures. For this reason, Tommy was not willing to change the word purple. So the team hung up the problem, hoping to revisit it later with more inspiration.

“God did not disappoint.

“Years later, Tommy hiked with some of the men near their village. They saw a tree that possessed bulbous growths growing on the side of it like fruit. These growths were ‘the most beautiful color of purple I’d ever seen,’ explained Tommy.

“’What is the name of this tree?’ Tommy asked the men.

“’This is an Okani tree,’ they replied.

“Tommy suggested, ‘Why don’t you, in those passages where we’ve been struggling to translate the color purple, use ‘they put a robe on Jesus the color of the fruit of the Okani tree’?

“’Yeah. We know exactly what color that is,’ the men said enthusiastically.

“Everyone in their village would also visualize this phrase accurately, as the Okani tree is the only tree in that area that produces this kind of purple growth. So now, among the Kasua people, in his royal purple robe, Jesus is shown to be the king that he is.”

In Numbers 4:13, Gbaya uses the ideophone soi-soi to emphasize the purple color. Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation and soi-soi designates something that has a red or purple color, or a thing with a clear or clean appearance. (Source: Philip Noss)

servant / slave

While the Greek term doulos in the New Testament and ‘ebed in the Old Testament refer to slightly different concepts (unlike in New Testament Judea in Old Testament Israel and Judah, Hebrew servants/slaves were required to be released after six years of labor and, regardless of when they started their servitude, all Hebrew servants were to be automatically freed during the year of Jubilee), translation issues are somewhat similar.

Joel Baden (2025, p. 65ff.) says this about the Hebrew term used in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible:

“The English words ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ have decidedly different connotations. ‘Servant’ has the sense of ‘employee.’ ‘Slave,’ by contrast, carries with it the ideas of an owned and controlled body, of violence and dishonor. The connotation of ‘servant’ can verge on the positive; ‘slave’ is predominantly negative. How a reader of the Bible understands the identity of a character or the relationship between one character and another or the world of ancient Israel depends significantly on whether the word ‘servant’ or ‘slave’ is used. In Hebrew, however, there is but one word underlying every occurrence of ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ in our modern translations. The distinction between the two exists only on the level of interpretation.

“It is not a matter of mere nomenclature. Take the story of Genesis 24, in which Abraham sends his servant off to find a wife for Isaac. The servant — though the main character of the passage — has no name and is identified only by his title, which he even uses to introduce himself: ‘I am Abraham’s servant,’ he says (Genesis 24:34, Jewish Publication Society). This is often read as a warm story about a devoted servant — usually imagined to be relatively old — who carries out the elderly patriarch’s final wishes. How does it change, how do we reimagine it, when we read all thirteen mentions of Abraham’s servant as, in fact, Abraham’s slave? We know Abraham has slaves: His ‘servant’ even says so in this very chapter in the very next verse: ‘The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich: he has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and asses’ (24:35, JPS). Yet generations of translators, interpreters, and readers have failed to connect the slaves (the property with which God has blessed Abraham) and the servant — the slave who is the protagonist of this same story.

“When slaves are turned into servants, the Bible itself is changed. Our revulsion at the institution of slavery is kept at a distance from the biblical text that stands as our religious heritage. The Bible is protected, albeit from itself. Slavery is minimized, or worse: The King James Version, notably, does not translate ‘ebed as ‘slave’ a single time. The result? Some KJV readers have denied that there is any slavery in the Bible whatsoever. Yet the word ‘ebed appears around 800 times in the Bible. That’s 800 moments when a slave, and the existence of slavery in ancient Israel and the biblical text, has been erased.

“The social role that we associate with the term ‘servant’ didn’t exist in ancient Israel. Slaves, however, did. Israel knew what it was to be a slave, and Israel knew, too, what it was to own a slave. And thus Israel uses the language and metaphor of slavery again and again to express the basic notions of obedience, of power disparity, of bodily control and the absence of agency. Samuel says to Yahweh upon being called, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ (1 Samuel 3:9, JPS). ‘Let my lord go ahead of his servant,’ Jacob says to Esau in Genesis 33:14 (JPS). Rendered as ‘servant’ in every translation, this is a sort of formally obsequious, self-abnegating speech. While literal slavery is not at stake in these sorts of expressions, the metaphorical reference to the relative status of slave and master is lost when it is translated as ‘servant.’

“So, too, when those figures who are the ‘ebed to a king are referred to as ‘courtiers,’ ‘officials,’ ‘attendants,’ ‘soldiers,’ ‘subjects,’ ‘envoys,’ ‘ministers,’ or even sometimes simply ‘men,’ of the king. These are all translations of the same word, and the instinct to specify their distinctive roles in the royal court is understandable. Yet in doing so, translations obscure the actual language with the connotations that it presents: subordination, threat of violence to one’s person, absolute control over will and agency. And so, too, when it is not a human king but God to whom one is said to be ‘ebed. In the book of Joshua, God states, ‘My servant Moses is dead’ (1:2, JPS) — we are relatively comfortable with the idea of serving God but perhaps less so with the idea of being God’s slave. Yet the qualities of obedience, subservience, and loyalty — and the implicit threat of punishment for the lack thereof — are part of this picture as well. One might point to the way this language is picked up in the New Testament in the phrase ‘slave of Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 7:22.

“If ‘servants’ and ‘slaves’ are not understood to be equivalent — and in modern English it is safe to say that they are not — then every time that the word ‘ebed appears, a choice has to be made by the translator. The diminishment of the very word ‘slave’ in English translations of the Hebrew Bible results in the diminishment of the idea and reality of slavery in the Bible and in the world that produced it. Though there is no debate to be had about whether there was slavery in the Bible and in ancient Israel, a lay reader of the text in translation might well wonder.

“Our ears, and eyes, have become accustomed to seeing the word ‘servant’ in the Bible. ‘Slave’ often sounds wrong, inapt, almost harsh. Yet it is just this discomfort that signals how important the change is. Whenever we encounter the word ‘servant’ in our English translations, we should be obliged to ask why it says ‘servant’ and not ‘slave’ — and what difference it would make to our reading of the text as an individual, as a community, and as a culture if we were instead to read ‘slave.’”

Ruden (2021, p. lviii) says this about the Greek term in the New Testament:

“In Judea, servitude was sui generis and could be complicated, and accordingly the Greek vocabulary in scripture is varied. But there appears to be no basis for sugarcoating the word meaning a chattel slave in nearly all Greek literature, doulos. It is unlikely that the internationally oriented authors of the Gospels didn’t mean what their peers meant by the word — ‘slave.’ Also, the English word ‘servant’ is too vague for the array of servitors (including trusted house slaves and personal attendants), military and administrative subordinates, and ritual helpers the Greek of the Gospels distinguishes.”

Some English New Testament translations (Ruden 2021, Hart 2017, The Orthodox New Testament 2004) have consistently used slave for the Greek doulos but no Old Testament translation consistently translates ‘ebed with only one term.

In a number of leading German translations, including the Catholic Einheitsübersetzung (1980 / 2016) and the Protestant Elberfelder Bibel (1871 / 2006), BasisBibel (2021), as well as the translation by Luther (all editions) use the term Knecht throughout. Knecht is an old-fashioned term for a low-class, often agricultural servant with little or no social mobility, a position that is somewhat located between Diener (“servant”) and Sklave (“slave”). The only times these versions specifically don’t use Knecht is where slavery is specifically in the focus (such as Leviticus 25:44 or Philemon 1:16).

complete verse (2 Chronicles 2:14)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of 2 Chronicles 2:14:

  • Kupsabiny: “His mother comes from up there in Dan and his father comes from up there in Tyre. That craftsman has great experience/skill concerning the making of things of gold, silver, bronze, iron, stones and wood. That person knows to sew cloths that are blue, purple and read. He also knows to engrave and he can engrave anything following what he is being told. That man can work with your craftsmen whom your father David has chosen.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “He is the son of a woman of the tribe of Dan. His father, however, lives in Tyre. He is a craftsman who is skilled to do nice work in gold, silver, bronze, stone, wood, and red, blue, and purple thread and good cotton cloth. He is one who has taken training in all types of carving work. He is also able to work in accordance with any sample he is given. Please allow him to work with your craftsmen and with the craftsmen who work for your master, your father, King David.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “His mother came from Dan and his father came from Tyre. He is expert to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and to make purple cloth, red and blue, and linen. He is experienced in every kind of engraving, and he can do any kind of design you have him do. He will-work with your workers and with the workers whom honorable David, your father, had chosen.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “His mother was from the tribe of Dan, and his father was from here in Tyre. He is very able to make things from gold and silver and bronze and iron and stone and wood, but he also makes nice things from purple and blue and red cloth, and he does all kinds of engraving. He can make things using any design/pattern that you give to him. He will work with your craftsmen, and the craftsmen who did work for your father, King David.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

David

The name that is transliterated as “David” in English means “beloved.” (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )

In Spanish Sign Language it is translated with the sign signifying king and a sling (referring to 1 Samuel 17:49 and 2 Samuel 5:4). (Source: John Elwode in The Bible Translator 2008, p. 78ff. )


“Elizabeth” in Spanish Sign Language, source: Sociedad Bíblica de España

In German Sign Language it is only the sling. (See here ).


“David” in German Sign Language (source )

For more information on translations of proper names with sign language see Sign Language Bible Translations Have Something to Say to Hearing Christians .

The (Protestant) Mandarin Chinese transliteration of “David” is 大卫 (衛) / Dàwèi which carries an additional meaning of “Great Protector.”

Click or tap here to see a short video clip about David (source: Bible Lands 2012)

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: David .

Translation commentary on 2 Chronicles 2:14

This verse provides a detailed description of the background and qualifications of the gifted craftsman whom King Hiram was sending to Solomon.

The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan: It is important for readers to understand that Huram’s mother was an Israelite, which is the sense of this phrase. This information may be made explicit by saying “his mother was an Israelite from the tribe of Dan” (Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente; similarly Contemporary English Version). Compare also “His mother is from the tribe of Dan in Israel” (New Living Translation). Since Dan had lived several centuries earlier, Huram was not literally a son of one of Dan’s daughters. Rather, she was from the tribe of Dan (so Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, New Living Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente). However, according to 1 Kgs 7.14, Huram’s mother was from the tribe of Naphtali. Interpreters have made several different suggestions to explain how Huram’s mother could be both a member of the tribe of Dan and a member of the tribe of Naphtali. But such attempts to solve the difference have no bearing on translation. The Hebrew here clearly says that his mother was from the tribe of Dan.

And his father was a man of Tyre: Huram’s father was a Phoenician and not an Israelite. For this clause and the previous one Peregrino says “son of a Danite woman and a Phoenician father,” and Bible en français courant has “He is Tyrian by his father, but originating from the tribe of Dan by his mother.”

He is trained to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, and crimson fabrics and fine linen: These words echo verse 7 (see the comments there). Stone translates a Hebrew word that is general in meaning. The context usually indicates whether the reference is to ordinary stones or to precious gems. Here some translators believe it refers to “precious stones” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, El libro del Pueblo de Dios). However, this context also allows for understanding it as referring to ordinary stonework. For linen see the comments on 1 Chr 4.21. It was usually a white or cream color since it was hard to dye. For this whole clause New Living Translation says “He is skillful at making things from gold, silver, bronze, and iron. He also knows all about stonework, carpentry, and weaving. He is an expert in dyeing purple, blue, and scarlet cloth and in working with linen.”

And to do all sorts of engraving: See the comments on 2Chr 2.7.

And execute any design that may be assigned him: An American Translation says “and to sketch any artistic device that may be assigned to him.” Since the passive verb be assigned (literally “be given”) will be a problem in some languages, another way of expressing this whole clause is “Whatever work a person asks him to do, he can do it.” Contemporary English Version says “And he can carve anything if you give him a pattern to follow.”

With your craftsmen, the craftsmen of my lord, David your father: The Hebrew has the common conjunction between the words your craftsmen and the craftsmen of my lord, David your father. Revised Standard Version and New Revised Standard Version do not translate this conjunction, apparently taking it as a mark of apposition. That is, in these two versions Solomon’s craftsmen are identified with David’s craftsmen (see 1 Chr 22.15-16). However, most versions translate the conjunction as “and,” so that King Hiram refers to two different groups of workers.

The expression my lord, David your father may present problems in some languages. The words my lord are intended to show Hiram’s respect for David. In some languages it may be necessary to say “David, your father, whom I respect greatly” or “the honorable King David, your father.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Chronicles, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2014. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator’s Notes on 2 Chronicles 2:14

2:14a He is the son of a woman from the daughters of Dan, and his father is a man of Tyre.

His mother was from ⌊the Israelite clan of⌋ Dan and his father was from Tyre.
-or-
His mother was from ⌊the clan of⌋ Dan ⌊in Israel⌋. His father was from ⌊the city⌋ of Tyre.

2:14b He is skilled in work with gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood,

He has skill to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, and stone and wood,
-or-
He knows how to make things using gold, silver, bronze and iron, and stone and wood.

2:14c purple, blue, and crimson yarn, and fine linen.

and to make things with purple, red and blue cloth, and fine linen.
-or-
⌊He also knows how to work with⌋ purple, red, and blue cloth, and with linen cloth.

2:14d He is experienced in every kind of engraving

He has experience at etch designs
-or-
He knows how to chisel pictures

2:14e and can execute any design that is given him.

and he can engrave anything you want him to.
-or-
and can make any pattern that you give to him.

2:14f He will work with your craftsmen

He will work with your skilled men
-or-
He will work with your craftsmen

2:14h and with those of my lord, your father David.

and with those of my lord, King David your father.
-or-
and with the craftsmen of your respected father, King David.

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