6The three companions in Babylon who had voluntarily surrendered their lives to the flames so as not to serve vain things, you rescued unharmed, even to a hair, moistening the fiery furnace with dew and turning the flame against all their enemies.
The Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin that is translated as “enemy” or “foe” in English is translated in the HausaCommon Language Bible as “friends of front,” i.e., the person standing opposite you in a battle. (Source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
In North Alaskan Inupiatun it is translated with a term that implies that it’s not just someone who hates you, but one who wants to do you harm (Source: Robert Bascom), in Tarok as ukpa ìkum or “companion in war/fighting,” and in Ikwere as nye irno m or “person who hates me” (source for this and one above: Chuck and Karen Tessaro in this newsletter ).
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.
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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 Translator2002, 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.”
The three companions in Babylon who had voluntarily surrendered their lives to the flames so as not to serve vain things … : The three companions in Babylon refers to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Dan 3.8-30 and the Song of the Three Young Men. The direct object (The three companions) of the main verb (rescued) opens the sentence. This is the same pattern as in the previous two verses. Babylon was the capital city of the Babylonian Empire. It was located in southern Mesopotamia on a branch of the Euphrates River (about 90 kilometers or 55 miles southwest of modern Baghdad). Voluntarily surrendered their lives to the flames may be rendered “were willing to die by being burned.” Vain things refers to idols.
You rescued unharmed, even to a hair may be rendered “You rescued them completely unhurt, with not even a hair on their bodies burned.” Dan 3.27 mentions that not a hair of their heads was burned.
Moistening the fiery furnace with dew may be expressed as “you protected them with dew in the flaming furnace” or “you used dew to cool the flaming furnace.” TYM 27 (Dan 3.50 in the Catholic Bible) refers to the protecting dew in the furnace. The furnace in view here probably had an opening at the top and another at ground level. It was clearly large enough for men to stand in. Dew is the liquid found on leaves or the petals of flowers in the early morning.
And turning the flame against all their enemies may be translated “You burned all their enemies to death” or even “and burned up their enemies instead” (Contemporary English Version). Dan 3.22 speaks of the fiery death of the men who had thrown the three young men into the flames.
Here is an alternative model for this verse:
• Then there were the three friends, captives in Babylon, who preferred to die by burning to death rather than worship idols. You burned their enemies to death, but you protected them with dew in the flaming furnace [or, you used dew to protect them in the flaming furnace], and rescued them completely unhurt, with not even a hair on their bodies burned.
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 3-4 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2018. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.
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