1st person pronoun referring to God (Japanese)

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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 first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also pronoun for “God”.

formal 2nd person plural pronoun (Japanese)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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).

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Japanese honorifics (Exodus 32:13)

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 benefactive construction as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. Here, omoiokoshite (思い起こして) or “remember” is used in combination with kudasaru (くださる), a respectful form of the benefactive kureru (くれる). A benefactive reflects the good will of the giver or the gratitude of a recipient of the favor. To convey this connotation, English translation needs to employ a phrase such as “for me (my sake)” or “for you (your sake).”

Other uses of honorifics in this verse include:

  • The use of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, iw-are-ru (言われる) or “say” is used.
  • The choice of an imperative construction with the honorific form kudasai (ください) reflects that the action is called for as a favor for the sake of the beneficiary. This polite kudasai imperative form is often translated as “please” in English. While English employs pure imperatives in most imperative constructions (“Do this!”), Japanese chooses the polite kudasai (“Do this, please.”).
  • The choice of an honorific prefix. When the referent is God or a person or persons to be honored, the honorific prefix go- (御 or ご) is used in go-jibun (ご自分), a combination of “onseself” (jibun) and the honorific prefix go-.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

addressing God

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 Translator 2002, 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.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

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).

Translation commentary on Exod 32:13

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel is still addressed to Yahweh. Literally the Hebrew says “Remember to [or, for] Abraham…,” which suggests the meaning “Remember to their credit.” Remember here does not mean that Yahweh has forgotten his promise to the patriarchs, but rather that Moses is simply calling it to his attention. Good News Translation changes Israel to “Jacob” in order to focus on the man himself rather than on his descendants (so also New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh and New Jerusalem Bible). Thy servants uses the word that also means “slaves,” but here it is used in a positive sense, showing respect both to Yahweh and to the three patriarchs, and indicating that they faithfully obeyed God.

To whom thou didst swear by thine own self is literally “whom you swore to them by yourself.” The Hebrew uses the word shabaʿ, meaning “to swear.” (See the comment on this word at 13.5.) Good News Translation has “Remember the solemn promise you made to them,” which brings out the idea of a “promise” but weakens the idea of an oath. Durham has “to whom you bound yourself by oath,” but the idea of by thine own self is only implied. Therefore one may say either “Remember the solemn promise you made to them by your own name” or “to whom you bound yourself by an oath in your own name.”

And didst say to them, literally “and you [singular] spoke to them,” introduces the words of Yahweh’s promise to the patriarchs. New Jerusalem Bible has “and made this promise.” I will multiply your descendants is literally “I will cause to be many your [plural] seed.” As the stars of heaven is literally “like the stars of the heavens.” New International Version has “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.” Good News Translation changes the direct speech to indirect, and so the pronoun I is changed to “you.”

And all this land that I have promised is literally “and all this land which I said.” New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh has “all this land of which I spoke.” I will give to your descendants uses the same word meaning “your [plural] seed.” And they shall inherit it for ever uses the word that means to obtain or receive property, or to take possession of land. So Good News Translation has “all that land you promised would be their possession forever,” and Translator’s Old Testament has “they shall occupy it permanently.”

An alternative translation model for this verse is:

• Remember the strong promise you made to your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By using your own name, you promised, “I will cause them to have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, and I will give their descendants this land forever.”

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .