sorrow

The Greek, Latin and Hebrew that is translated in English as “painful” or “sorrow” is translated in Huba as “cut the insides.” David Frank explains: “Huba has just one expression that covers both ‘angry’ and ‘sad.’ They don’t make a distinction in their language. I suppose you could say that the term they use means more generically, ‘strong emotional reaction’ (source: David Frank in this blog post ). Similarly, in Bariai it is “the interior is severed/cut” (source: Bariai Back Translation).

In Noongar it is translated as koort-warra or “heart bad.” (Source: Bardip Ruth-Ang 2020)

In Enlhet it is translated as “going aside of the innermost.” “Innermost” or valhoc is a term that is frequently used in Enlhet to describe a large variety of emotions or states of mind (for other examples see here). (Source: Jacob Loewen in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 24ff. )

See also grieving / sorrowful.

complete verse (Hebrews 12:11)

Following are a number of back-translations of Hebrews 12:11:

  • Uma: “While we are being advised and beaten, we aren’t happy, we feel it hurt. Afterwards, when we have become clear [i.e., aware, mature] because of that advice, our lives become good [i.e., happy, at peace] and our deeds become upright.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “When we (dual) are punished we (dual) are not happy because we (dual) have difficulties. But when God punishes us (incl.) and we (dual) endure and believe, the final outcome (will be that) our (dual) works/doings are straight and our (dual) thinking is peaceful/we have peace in our minds.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And when God trains us, we do not like it because what we have to go through is difficult. But when His training of us is finished and by means of this we are already trained by God, then our behavior is already righteous and then our situation is very peaceful.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “It is admittedly true that advice and spankings do not make-us-happy upon their arrival, because they hurt, but when we are taught/trained by them, the outcome is good, because it leads to a peaceful mind and righteous behavior.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Really as long as it’s the time when he is correcting us, we are not happy, for it’s hard for us. But when it has now passed, provided we submitted-meekly/patiently, our life will become all the more righteous/straight, that being what will lead us to a mind/inner-being which is much more peaceful.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “When God whips us, we suffer, we don’t like the whipping he gives us. But when our hearts understand that it does us good, they are at peace and more do we endeavor to walk good.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

righteous, righteousness

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The Greek, Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Latin terms that are translated in English mostly as “righteous” or “righteousness” (see below for a discussion of the English translation) are most commonly expressed with concept of “straightness,” though this may be expressed in a number of ways. (Click or tap here to see the details)

Following is a list of (back-) translations of various languages:

  • Bambara, Southern Bobo Madaré, Chokwe (ululi), Amganad Ifugao, Chol, Eastern Maninkakan, Toraja-Sa’dan, Pamona, Batak Toba, Bilua, Tiv: “be straight”
  • Laka: “follow the straight way” or “to straight-straight” (a reduplicated form for emphasis)
  • Sayula Popoluca: “walk straight”
  • Highland Puebla Nahuatl, Kekchí, Muna: “have a straight heart”
  • Kipsigis: “do the truth”
  • Mezquital Otomi: “do according to the truth”
  • Huautla Mazatec: “have truth”
  • Yine: “fulfill what one should do”
  • Indonesian: “be true”
  • Navajo (Dinė): “do just so”
  • Anuak: “do as it should be”
  • Mossi: “have a white stomach” (see also happiness / joy)
  • Paasaal: “white heart” (source: Fabian N. Dapila in The Bible Translator 2024, p. 415ff.)
  • (San Mateo del Mar Huave: “completely good” (the translation does not imply sinless perfection)
  • Nuer: “way of right” (“there is a complex concept of “right” vs. ‘left’ in Nuer where ‘right’ indicates that which is masculine, strong, good, and moral, and ‘left’ denotes what is feminine, weak, and sinful (a strictly masculine viewpoint!) The ‘way of right’ is therefore righteousness, but of course women may also attain this way, for the opposition is more classificatory than descriptive.”) (This and all above from Bratcher / Nida except for Bilua: Carl Gross; Tiv: Rob Koops; Muna: René van den Berg)
  • Central Subanen: “wise-good” (source: Robert Brichoux in OPTAT 1988/2, p. 80ff. )
  • Xicotepec De Juárez Totonac: “live well”
  • Mezquital Otomi: “goodness before the face of God” (source for this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
  • Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl: “the result of heart-straightening” (source: Nida 1947, p. 224)
  • Eastern Highland Otomi: “entirely good” (when referred to God), “do good” or “not be a debtor as God sees one” (when referred to people)
  • Carib: “level”
  • Tzotzil: “straight-hearted”
  • Ojitlán Chinantec: “right and straight”
  • Yatzachi Zapotec: “walk straight” (source for this and four previous: John Beekman in Notes on Translation November 1964, p. 1-22)
  • Makonde: “doing what God wants” (in a context of us doing) and “be good in God’s eyes” (in the context of being made righteous by God) (note that justify / justification is translated as “to be made good in the eyes of God.” (source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
  • Aari: The Pauline word for “righteous” is generally rendered by “makes one without sin” in the Aari, sometimes “before God” is added for clarity. (Source: Loren Bliese)
  • North Alaskan Inupiatun: “having sin taken away” (Source: Nida 1952, p. 144)
  • Nyamwezi: wa lole: “just” or “someone who follows the law of God” (source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
  • Venda: “nothing wrong, OK” (Source: J.A. van Roy in The Bible Translator 1972, p. 418ff. )
  • Ekari: maakodo bokouto or “enormous truth” (the same word that is also used for “truth“; bokouto — “enormous” — is being used as an attribute for abstract nouns to denote that they are of God [see also here]; source: Marion Doble in The Bible Translator 1963, p. 37ff. ).
  • Guhu-Samane: pobi or “right” (also: “right (side),” “(legal) right,” “straightness,” “correction,” “south,” “possession,” “pertinence,” “kingdom,” “fame,” “information,” or “speech” — “According to [Guhu-Samane] thinking there is a common core of meaning among all these glosses. Even from an English point of view the first five can be seen to be closely related, simply because of their similarity in English. However, from that point the nuances of meaning are not so apparent. They relate in some such a fashion as this: As one faces the morning sun, south lies to the right hand (as north lies to the left); then at one’s right hand are his possessions and whatever pertains to him; thus, a rich man’s many possessions and scope of power and influence is his kingdom; so, the rich and other important people encounter fame; and all of this spreads as information and forms most of the framework of the people’s speech.”) (Source: Ernest Richert in Notes on Translation 1964, p. 11ff.)
  • Haroti (Hadauti): “blameless in God’s eyes” (source: Vikram Mukka in Christianity Today )
  • German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999): Gerechtheit, a neologism to differentiate it from the commonly-used Gerechtigkeit which can mean “justice” but is more often used in modern German as “fairness” (Berger / Nord especially use Gerechtheit in Letter to the Romans) or Gerechtestun, also a neologism, meaning “righteous deeds” (especially in Letter to the Ephesians)
  • “did what he should” (Eastern Highland Otomi)
  • “a clear man, good [man]” (Mairasi) (source: Enggavoter 2004)
  • Cherokee: “with heart” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 29)

The English translation of righteousness, especially in the New Testament is questioned by Nicholas Wolterstorff (2008, p. 110ff.) (Click or tap here to see the details)

Those who approach the New Testament solely through English translations face a serious linguistic obstacle to apprehending what these writings say about justice. In most English translations, the word “justice” occurs relatively infrequently. It is no surprise, then, that most English-speaking people think the New Testament does not say much about justice; the Bibles they read do not say much about justice. English translations are in this way different from translations into Latin, French, Spanish, German, Dutch — and for all I know, most languages.

The basic issue is well known among translators and commentators. Plato’s Republic, as we all know, is about justice. The Greek noun in Plato’s text that is standardly translated as “justice” is dikaiosunē (δικαιοσύνη); the adjective standardly translated as “just” is dikaios (δίκαιος). This same dik-stem occurs around three hundred times in the New Testament, in a wide variety of grammatical variants.

To the person who comes to English translations of the New Testament fresh from reading and translating classical Greek, it comes as a surprise to discover that though some of those occurrences are translated with grammatical variants on our word “just,” the great bulk of dik-stem words are translated with grammatical variants on our word “right.” The noun, for example, is usually translated as “righteousness,” not as “justice.” In English we have the word “just” and its grammatical variants coming horn the Latin iustitia, and the word “right” and its grammatical variants coining from the Old English recht. Almost all our translators have decided to translate the great bulk of dik-stem words in the New Testament with grammatical variants on the latter — just the opposite of the decision made by most translators of classical Greek.

I will give just two examples of the point. The fourth of the beatitudes of Jesus, as recorded in the fifth chapter of Matthew, reads, in the New Revised Standard Version, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” The word translated as “righteousness” is dikaiosunē. And the eighth beatitude, in the same translation, reads “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Greek word translated as “righteousness” is dikaiosunē. Apparently, the translators were not struck by the oddity of someone being persecuted because he is righteous. My own reading of human affairs is that righteous people are either admired or ignored, not persecuted; people who pursue justice are the ones who get in trouble.

It goes almost without saying that the meaning and connotations of “righteousness” are very different in present-day idiomatic English from those of “justice.” “Righteousness” names primarily if not exclusively a certain trait of personal character. (…) The word in present-day idiomatic English carries a negative connotation. In everyday speech one seldom any more describes someone as righteous; if one does, the suggestion is that he is self-righteous. “Justice,” by contrast, refers to an interpersonal situation; justice is present when persons are related to each other in a certain way. There is, indeed, a long tradition of philosophical and theological discussion on the virtue of justice. But that use of the term has almost dropped out of idiomatic English; we do not often speak any more of a person as just. And in any case, the concept of the virtue of justice presupposes the concept of those social relationships that are just.

So when the New Testament writers speak of dikaiosunē, are they speaking of righteousness or of justice? Is Jesus blessing those who hunger and thirst for righteousness or those who hunger and thirst for justice?

A thought that comes to mind is that the word changed meaning between Plato and the New Testament. Had Jesus’ words been uttered in Plato’s time and place, they would have been understood as blessing those who hunger and thirst for the social condition of justice. In Jesus’ time and place, they would have been understood as blessing (hose who hunger and thirst for righteousness — that is, for personal moral rectitude.

Between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament there came the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. (…) One of the challenges facing the Septuagint translators was how to catch, in the Greek of their day, the combination of mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט) with tsedeq (צֶ֫דֶק). Tsedeq that we find so often in the Old Testament, standardly translated into English as justice and righteousness. The solution they settled on was to translate tsedeq as dikaiosunē, and to use a term whose home use was in legal situations, namely, krisis (κρίσις), to translate mishpat. Mishpat and tsedeq became krisis and dikaiosunē. For the most part, this is also how they translated the Hebrew words even when they were not explicitly paired with each other: mishpat (justice) becomes krisis, tsedeq (righteousness) becomes dikaiosunē. The pattern is not entirely consistent, however; every now and then, when mishpat is not paired off with tsedeq, it is translated with dikaiosunē or some other dik-stem word (e.g., 1 Kings 3:28, Proverbs 17:23, Isaiah 61:8).

I think the conclusion that those of us who are not specialists in Hellenistic Greek should draw from this somewhat bewildering array of data is that, in the linguistic circles of the New Testament writers, dikaiosunē did not refer definitively either to the character trait of righteousness (shorn of its negative connotations) or to the social condition of justice, but was ambiguous as between those two. If dikaiosunē had referred decisively in Hellenistic Greek to righteousness rather than to justice, why would the Septuagint translators sometimes use it to translate mishpat, why would Catholic translators [into the 1980s] usually translate it as “justice,” and why would all English translators sometimes translate it as “justice”? (All earlier Latin-based Catholic translations, the New American Bible and the Jerusalem Bible, both of which appeared in the early 1970s have most occurrences of dik-stem words translated with variants on “just.” In subsequent revisions of the New American Bible, and in the New Jerusalem Bible, these translations have been altered to translations along the lines of righteousness. Other translations that use a form of justice or “doing right / rightness” include the British New English Bible [1970] and Revised English Bible [1989] and some newer translations such as by Hart [2017], Ruden [2021] or McKnight [2023]).

Conversely, if it referred decisively to justice, why would the Septuagint translators usually not use it to translate mishpat, and why would almost all translators sometimes translate it as “righteousness”? Context will have to determine whether, in a given case, it is best translated as “justice” or as “righteousness” — or as something else instead; and if context does not determine, then it would be best, if possible, to preserve the ambiguity and use some such ambiguous expression as “what is right” or “the right thing.”

Let me make one final observation about translation. When one takes in hand a list of all the occurrences of dik-stem words in the Greek New Testament, and then opens up almost any English translation of the New Testament and reads in one sitting all the translations of these words, a certain pattern emerges: unless the notion of legal judgment is so prominent in the context as virtually to force a translation in terms of justice, the translators will prefer to speak of righteousness.

See also respectable, righteous, righteous (person), devout, and She is more in the right(eous) than I.

Translation commentary on Hebrews 12:11

This verse contains another contrast. The first part of it was a common saying, almost a proverb, in popular moral teaching of New Testament times.

The structure of this verse emphasizes the contrast between at the time and Later. Later may also mean “Last of all” or “In the end,” as in Matthew 21.37. This sense is suggested by references to the “last times” at the end of this verse and in the wider context.

The phrase rendered sad, not glad sounds a little heavy in the original as well as in translation. The writer is thinking back to the joy mentioned in verse 2 and uses the same Greek word here.

As Revised Standard Version shows, the verse is a contrast between the effect of discipline at the time and Later. Good News Translation expands the first part of the contrast, expressing “all discipline” (Revised Standard Version) as When we are punished. “Whenever we are punished” would have been closer to the meaning of the Greek. If Good News Bible is taken as the base for renderings in other languages, there may be some repetition in the reference to time. If so, the first sentence may be translated as “Whenever we are punished it seems to us to be something to make us sad, not glad,” deleting at the time.

Since the expression it seems to us involves some kind of reasoning or thought, it may be better to restructure the statement as “Whenever we are punished, we regard it as making us sad and certainly not glad” or “… happy.”

The second half of this verse (from Later, however) is written in a particularly impressive Greek literary style. This suggests that it is intended as a summary and conclusion of the section. This is confirmed by “Therefore” in verse 12 (Revised Standard Version) and by the change from argument to direct imperatives. common language translations (but not the UBS Greek New Testament or Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) therefore begin a new section at verse 12 rather than at verse 14.

Disciplined in 5.14 was translated through practice are able (see the comments). The idea of athletic training may be carried over from the beginning of the chapter; several translations have “trained.”

Those who have been disciplined by such punishment may be expressed as “those whom God has punished in order to show them what they have done wrong” or “those who have been corrected by the way in which God has punished them.” It may be essential to indicate that this is punishment which comes from God, especially in view of the explicit reference to God in verse 10.

Revised Standard Version suggests some confusion in this verse between the metaphors of athletic training and harvesting. The Greek for reap is in fact a dead metaphor meaning “to receive something in return” and may be translated in a nonfigurative way.

Peaceful reward is a rather strange expression. Several translations separate “peace” from reward and link it with a righteous life, literally “righteousness,” as in 1.9: Bijbel in Gewone Taal “the peace which comes from a righteous life,” Bible en français courant “peace associated with a just life,” and Translator’s New Testament “lives of peace and goodness.” These translations present a rather static view of the “good life” as one in which relationships with God and other people are what they should be. It is true that “peace” in the Bible implies total well-being (see 7.2; 13.21). However, in biblical thought, “peace,” like “righteousness,” involves action, and this aspect is brought out by Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch: “But later it appears, to all who have been brought up by this punishment, that it was good, and that they have become people who do what is right, and spread peace (around them).”

Reward is literally “fruit” (Revised Standard Version), meaning “the effect it produces” (Bible en français courant). It is not the word used for reward in 11.26, but the meaning is the same, that is, the fulfillment in men of God’s purposes (compare 11.40).

The expression a righteous life (in Greek literally “righteousness”) is in apposition to the peaceful reward. In other words this peaceful reward consists of a righteous life. But peaceful is actually a qualification of the life more than it is of the reward itself. Accordingly, one may render reap the peaceful reward of a righteous life as “obtain a reward which is a peaceful and righteous life” or “obtain the reward of living peacefully and righteously.” Righteous may be rendered as “in accordance with what God wants a person to do.”

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Letter of the Hebrews. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .