elder (of the community)

The Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek that is typically translated as “elders” in English is translated in the Danish Bibelen 2020 as folkets ledere or “leaders of the people.”

Martin Ehrensvärd, one of the translators, explains: “The term ‘elder’ turned out to pose a particularly thorny problem. In traditional bibles, you can find elders all of over the place and they never pose a problem for a translator, they are just always elders. But how to find a contemporary term for this semi-official, complex position? This may have been our longest-standing problem. A couple of times we thought we had the solution, and then implemented it throughout the texts, only to find out that it didn’t work. Like when we used city council or village council, depending on the context. In the end we felt that the texts didn’t work with such official terms, and throughout the years in the desert, these terms didn’t make much sense. Other suggestions were ‘the eldest and wisest’, ‘the respected citizens’, ‘the Israelites with a certain position in society’, ‘the elder council’ –- and let me point out that these terms sound better in Danish than in English (‘de fremtrædende borgere,’ ‘de mest fremtrædende israelitter,’ ‘alle israelitter med en vis position,’ ‘de ældste og de klogeste,’ ‘ældsterådet’). In the end we just said ‘leaders of the people.’ After a lot of hand-wringing, it turned out that we actually found a term that worked well. So, we had to give up conveying the fact that they were old, but the most important point is that they were community leaders.” (Source: Ehrensvärd in HIPHIL Novum 8/2023, p. 81ff. )

The German das Buch translation by Roland Werner (publ. 2009-2022) translates likewise as “leader of the people” (Anführer des Volkes).

distance (long / wide / high)

The concepts of distance that are translated in English with “long,” “wide,” and “high/tall” are translated in Kwere with one word: utali. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

Translation commentary on Deuteronomy 21:2

Your elders and your judges: see 5.23 and 1.16. The possessive your refers to the people of Israel as a whole.

Come forth: translators need to pay attention to the point of view; what this means is that the elders and judges are to “go out” (Good News Translation) to the place where the body was discovered. In certain languages it will be necessary to state where they go or come out from. It is evident that the passage means that they would come from all the nearby towns. So we may translate “Your leaders and judges must go out [or, come out] from the nearby towns and measure….”

Measure the distance: the purpose of this is to determine which is the closest town to the dead body. Instead of Revised Standard Version cities it is better to say “towns” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version; also New Revised Standard Version). It is assumed here that the early Hebrews did have practical means for measuring long distances such as this. However, the term used by a translator should be a general one and not refer to a measuring stick or tape that would be employed today. If a general term cannot be found, we may say something like “estimate” or “find out,” and measure the distance may be expressed as “estimate the distance from the place where the body was found to each of the nearby towns.”

Which are around him that is slain: this is a literal rendering of the Hebrew text. New Revised Standard Version has “the towns that are near the body”; more natural translations in English are New International Version “the neighboring towns” or New Jerusalem Bible “the surrounding towns.”

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 .