7The hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised against the person to execute the death penalty and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
“know something is true because of seeing it” in Teutila Cuicatec (source for this and above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
“ones who will confirm that these-things that you have seen are true” in Kankanaey (source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
“ones who are to testify about these things, because it all happened before your eyes” in Tagbanwa (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
For the phrase “So you shall purge the evil from your midst,” see 1 Corinthians 4:13.
Note that this quote in the New Testament is not taken from the Hebrew Bible but from the Greek Septuagint (LXX) which translates into English as “And you shall remove the evil one from yourselves.” (Translation by NETS — for the Greek version see the title’s tooltip)
For the phrase “They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known,” see 1 Corinthians 10:20.
Note that this quote in the New Testament is not taken from the Hebrew Bible but from the Greek Septuagint (LXX) which translates into English as “They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods they did not know.” (Translation by NETS — for the Greek version see the title’s tooltip)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Deuteronomy 17:7:
Kupsabiny: “The people who are the first to throw stones are those that say that this person is a sinner, and then the other people can also thrown stones. You like that in order to remove sin.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “The witnesses must be the first to throw stones to kill him. Then the other people must also throw stones. You must remove such kind of evil deeds from among you.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “The witnesses are the first-ones to stone him/her, and then all the people. You (plur.) must eliminate/eradicate this wickedness from among you (plur.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “The witnesses/ones who saw them doing it must be the first ones to throw stones at them. Then the other people should throw stones at them. By doing that, you will get rid of this evil practice among you.’” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.
One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).
The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him: the witnesses, whose testimony led to the person’s condemnation, were to be the first to throw stones at the condemned person.
Afterward the hand of all the people: for both groups, normal English usage is “The witnesses will be the first to throw stones at the condemned person, and after that all the other people are to do the same” (see also Good News Translation).
For the rest of the verse, see 13.5.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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