3He said to me, “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day.
The Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin that is often translated as “gentiles” (or “nations”) in English is often translated as a “local equivalent of ‘foreigners,'” such as “the people of other lands” (Guerrero Amuzgo), “people of other towns” (Tzeltal), “people of other languages” (San Miguel El Grande Mixtec), “strange peoples” (Navajo (Dinė) (this and above, see Bratcher / Nida), “outsiders” (Ekari), “people of foreign lands” (Kannada), “non-Jews” (North Alaskan Inupiatun), “people being-in-darkness” (a figurative expression for people lacking cultural or religious insight) (Toraja-Sa’dan) (source for this and three above Reiling / Swellengrebel), “from different places all people” (Martu Wangka) (source: Carl Gross).
Tzeltal translates it as “people in all different towns,” Chicahuaxtla Triqui as “the people who live all over the world,” Highland Totonac as “all the outsider people,” Sayula Popoluca as “(people) in every land” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Chichimeca-Jonaz as “foreign people who are not Jews,” Sierra de Juárez Zapotec as “people of other nations” (source of this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), Highland Totonac as “outsider people” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Uma as “people who are not the descendants of Israel” (source: Uma Back Translation), “other ethnic groups” (source: Newari Back Translation), and Yakan as “the other tribes” (source: Yakan Back Translation).
In Chichewa, it is translated with mitundu or “races.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Ezekiel 2:3:
Kupsabiny: “(It) said to me, ‘Listen Ezekiel, I am sending you to where the Israelites are, where there is a community that has rebelled against me. Those people and also their forefathers have gone astray from me until today/now.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “He said, ‘Man, I will-send you (sing.) to the people of Israel, to a nation that is-rebelling against me. Their ancestors have-/had-rebelled against me in the time-past, and until now they are- still -rebelling against me.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “He said, ‘You human, I will send you to the Israeli people. They are people who have turned away from me and rebelled against me. Their ancestors rebelled against me, and they themselves are still rebelling against me.” (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 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.
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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. 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.
And he said to me: God now addresses Ezekiel. He gives him his task and the message that he must pass on to the people. The pronoun he may be rendered “the voice” or “the one speaking.”
Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel …: For Son of man, see the comments on Ezek 2.1. I send you may be rendered “I am sending you” (Contemporary English Version). God tells Ezekiel to go to the people of Israel, which is literally “the sons of Israel.”
God calls the Israelites a nation of rebels. The Revised Standard Version footnote here indicates that the Hebrew has “nations” instead of nation. The Hebrew plural word for “nations” is difficult in two ways. First, this word usually refers to the foreign nations, the non-Jewish heathen nations. It is not used of Israel and Judah. Here it seems to apply to the Israelites, because Ezekiel’s audience were the people who were taken from Jerusalem into exile in Babylonia. Second, these exiles were only one nation or, in actual fact, only part of a nation, since the ten tribes of the northern kingdom had been taken into exile nearly 150 years earlier. Most translations simply take this word as a singular, as Revised Standard Version does. Others simply omit the word (so Good News Translation, Revised English Bible, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible). A third alternative is that “nations of rebels” applies to the foreign nations that Ezekiel addresses in chapters 25–32, but this does not fit well in the context. Each of these solutions minimizes the force of the strong judgment of God on the people of Israel. This verse is not referring to a particular act of rebellion, but is characterizing the people as a group: they have rebelled against God throughout their history. They are “rebellious people.” By using the word “nations” God actually calls his own people “heathen” people! The force of this judgment should be reflected in translation, if possible. Brownlee says “rebellious heathen,” which is a compact but satisfactory rendering.
Who have rebelled against me: The Hebrew verb rendered rebels and have rebelled means to disobey someone in authority, to fight against a ruler or a government, or to refuse to give allegiance to a sovereign. It is a word taken from political affairs and applied to the way the people of Israel did not obey God. The word is used twice here: the people are described as being rebels, that is, disobedient, and they have rebelled against God, that is, they have repeatedly and constantly disobeyed God, and turned against him.
They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day: This disobedience was not a new thing that the people started doing. Rather, their fathers, that is, “their ancestors” (Good News Translation), acted in the same way for many years. Some languages will say “their grandfathers.” Like the Hebrew word for rebels, the word for have transgressed also comes from the realm of political affairs, where it applies to people who break their agreements to obey their rulers. It also has a religious and ethical meaning, namely, to step aside from the path on which someone should be walking, to commit an offense or sin. Translators may render have transgressed against me as “have disobeyed me” or “have acted wrongly toward me.” To this very day indicates that the disobedience has continued without stopping. The people were still disobeying and opposing God at the time God was talking to Ezekiel.
A model for this verse is:
• “Human being, I am telling you to go to the Israelites. They are like the heathen nations. They disobey me. They continually turn against me. They have been disobeying me for many years. Their grandfathers before them used to disobey me. And they are still disobeying me now.
Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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 third person singular and plural pronoun (“he,” “she,” “it” and their various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. While it’s not uncommon to avoid pronouns altogether in Japanese, there are is a range of third person pronouns that can be used. In these verses a number of them are used that pay particularly much respect to the referred person (or, in fact, God, as in Exodus 15:2), including kono kata (この方), sono kata (その方), and ano kata (あの方), meaning “this person,” “that person,” and “that person over there.”
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