6When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the guilt of the house of Judah; forty days I assign you, one day for each year.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Ezekiel 4:6:
Kupsabiny: “When those days are over, turn around on your right side putting on your head the sin of Judah. That shall take you forty days. One day is like one year.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “Afterwards, turn-over to the right and carry-on-your-shoulder also the sin of the people of Juda for a period/[lit. inside] of 40 days; one day represents also one year.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “After that, lie down again. This time, lie on your right side for 40 days. That willsymbolize that the Israeli people will be punished more for their sins, one day for each yearduring which they will be punished.” (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.
And when you have completed these, that is, at the end of the 390 days that Ezekiel lay on his side. Parole de Vie says simply “At the end of this time.”
You shall lie down a second time, but on your right side …: After lying on his left side for 390 days, God tells Ezekiel to lie down again, but this time on his other side. He must lie on his right side for forty days. During this time he must bear the punishment of the house of Judah, that is, he must suffer just as his people suffer. The house of Judah refers to the people who lived in the southern kingdom of Judah in and around Jerusalem. It is unclear why the people of Judah are specified in this verse after all the Israelites were mentioned in the previous verses, since Ezekiel usually refers to them as the sons of Israel or the house of Israel. Presumably it was because the southern kingdom of Judah was the only part of the Israelite nation that still existed.
Forty days I assign you, a day for each year: God punishes Ezekiel a day for each year he punishes the people of Judah. Many languages will have to make explicit the connection between the days that Ezekiel suffers and the years that the people suffer.
It is not clear what the 40 years refer to. There is no evidence that Ezekiel saw the 40 year period just before his call in 593 B.C., or any other 40 year period of Judah’s history, as a time of especially great sin. However, 40 years makes perfectly good sense if Ezekiel is looking forward to a period of punishment for the people of Judah. Many of his fellow Jews had already been taken into Babylonia, Jerusalem would soon be destroyed, and Ezekiel foresaw a time of exile for his people; these disasters were due to their rebelliousness and wickedness. Thus it is best to understand the 40 years of punishment of the house of Judah as referring to a time of punishment that had just started or was about to start. This punishment was the Babylonian exile. 40 years then may be a general expression for a generation, in which case it is probably a prediction of approximately how long the exile in Babylonia would last, namely, about one generation.
This interpretation of the 40 years depends on a different meaning for the Hebrew word ʿawon rendered punishment than its meaning in verse 5 in connection with the 390 years. There it refers to sin, and here to punishment. Such a play on words will probably not be possible in many languages. Translators in those languages will have to decide how to render the finely balanced, parallel structure of the Hebrew text of verses 4-6, despite the slightly different meaning in the two parts of it for the word ʿawon. We recommend that translators give priority to the meaning, even though it upsets the balanced structure of the original text.
A model for this verse is:
• After that, lie down [on the ground] on your right side. Stay like that for 40 days. Those people of Judah sinned and I will punish them for 40 years. You must take the punishment of the people of Judah on yourself for 40 days, one day for each year [that they will be punished].
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 .
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