tread them down like the mire

In Gbaya, the notion of treading in mire in Isaiah 10:6 is emphasized with the ideophone rɔ́kɔ́tɔ́-rɔ́kɔ́tɔ́, which refers to walking in very soft mud.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

gentiles / nations

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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)

See also nations.

complete verse (Isaiah 10:6)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Isaiah 10:6:

  • Kupsabiny: “I sent Assyria
    to go and crush a country of sinners.
    I sent (it) to punish
    people that I was angry with.
    I gave (him) to rob
    and plunder things from those people
    and trample on (them) like rubbish on the road.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “To attack the ones who anger me in a land which does not honor God,
    I have sent the Assyrians to trample people
    with their feet like they trample dust on the road.
    and I have sent the Assyrians to take away the plunder.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “I will-command them to attack the ungodly nation that I hate, so-that it will-be-destroyed like mud in the street being-trampled-down, and so-that they take-away all properties of this nation.’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

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”.

Translation commentary on Isaiah 10:6

Yahweh’s plan for Assyria unfolds in this verse.

Against a godless nation I send him: Godless nation refers to a disobedient Israel. Godless is the adjective used to describe the nation in 9.17. According to the prophet’s perspective, Yahweh is active in global history. For Isaiah, God is about to send Assyrian troops to attack Israel (see Good News Translation). The preposition against implies that it is for the purpose of punishment. Concerning the pronoun him, translators will have to ensure that the pronoun they use will refer clearly to “Assyria,” mentioned in the previous verse. If there is doubt, they may make “Assyria” explicit, as Good News Translation has done. In some languages translators may need to place the verb phrase I send him at the beginning of the line (see the first example below).

And against the people of my wrath I command him: This line is parallel to the previous one. It describes Israel as the people of my wrath, meaning the people with whom Yahweh is angry. Translators may need to expand slightly on the verb command, if the receptor language demands it; for example, this line may be rendered “and against the people with whom I am angry I command him to go/march/advance.” Another possibility is “and I command him to attack the people with whom I am angry.”

To take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets: Here Isaiah gives the purpose of Assyria’s mission through the use of three verb phrases: to take spoil, to seize plunder, and to tread them down. We have noted before how he often uses three or four phrases to express one basic idea. He does this for emphasis. Take spoil and seize plunder are synonymous phrases. The nouns spoil and plunder both refer to the prizes of war, the booty taken from a defeated enemy. The Hebrew text uses the same emphatic construction in both of these phrases, namely, the verb followed by a noun object from the same root. It is literally “to spoil the spoil and to plunder the plunder.” If translators have similar emphatic constructions in their languages, they may use them here.

To tread them down like the mire of the streets is literally “to put him a trampling place like the dirt of the streets.” Since roads in the ancient world were mostly unpaved, the use of this image is obvious. The Assyrians were to treat the Israelites as though they were nothing more than dirt. In English there is a similar idiom: “to walk all over them….” Bible en français courant has “to trample him like mud in the street.”

For translating this verse we suggest the following examples:

• I send it [or, Assyria] against godless Israel,
I command it to attack those who make me so angry,
to despoil and plunder their goods,
and to walk all over them like the mud in the street.

• Against this godless Israel I am sending the Assyrians,
to attack those with whom I am angry I command them,
so as to spoil and plunder,
and tread them down just as they tread the dust in the street.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .