קָצַ֣פְתִּי עַל־עַמִּ֗י חִלַּ֨לְתִּי֙ נַחֲלָתִ֔י וָאֶתְּנֵ֖ם בְּיָדֵ֑ךְ לֹא־שַׂ֤מְתְּ לָהֶם֙ רַחֲמִ֔ים עַל־זָקֵ֕ן הִכְבַּ֥דְתְּ עֻלֵּ֖ךְ מְאֹֽד׃
6I was angry with my people;
I profaned my heritage;
I gave them into your hand;
you showed them no mercy;
on the aged you made your yoke
exceedingly heavy.
The Hebrew, Greek and Latin that is translated as “(was or became) angry” in English is translated in Kwere as “saw anger.” In Kwere, emotions are always paired with sensory verbs (seeing or smelling or hearing). (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
In Bariai it is “to have grumbling interiors” (source: Bariai Back Translation).
See also anger and feel (terror, pain, suffering, anxiety).
The Greek, Ge’ez, and Hebrew term that is translated into English as “yoke,” the Afar translation uses koyta (poles of camel pack) which refers to two poles in front of the hump and two behind; elsewhere in agricultural Ethiopia the yoke is only in front of the hump.
In Chol it is translated with tajbal, a term for “headband” (for carrying) (source: Ronald D. Olson in Notes on Translation January, 1968, p. 15ff.). Likewise, in Kele, it is translated with njɛmbɛ, “a carrying strap worn around the head and across the chest or shoulders to support a burden of firewood, garden produce or even a child carried by this on the back or hip” (source: William Ford in The Bible Translator 1957, p. 203ff. ).
In Matumbi it is translated as “rope” and “yoke is easy” is translated as “rope is slack/soft.” (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
In Kwasio it is translated with a term that refers to a “bulky piece of wood attached to the neck of a goat, preventing it from roaming freely in the brushy undergrowth.”
Joshua Ham explains: “When checking this verse in Kwasio, I was surprised to find that the Kwasio had a word for yoke. You see, none of the language groups we have worked with have a tradition of using animals to pull carts or plows. Since yokes don’t exist in the culture, there’s no need for a word for that concept in these languages.
“When I asked the Kwasio team about their word for yoke, they said that they don’t use yokes to help animals pull plows; rather, their word for yoke refers to a bulky piece of wood attached to the neck of a goat, preventing it from roaming freely in the brushy undergrowth. So while the exact use of a Kwasio yoke is not the same as a biblical yoke, there are a lot of similarities: in both cases, it’s a piece of wood around an animal’s neck that serves to keep the animal under control. While the overlap isn’t perfect, it’s pretty good — and almost certainly better than trying to squeeze in a distracting explanation of how yokes function in the biblical cultures.”
Adam Boyd (in The PNG Experience ) tells this story about finding the right term in Enga: “Jesus’s words in Matthew 11:29-30 are some of the most difficult to translate into the Enga language. From the time that I became a Christian, I was taught that a yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the neck of two animals and attached to a plough or cart that they are to pull. This is an easy enough concept to understand for people who come from societies that make use of beasts of burden, but in Papua New Guinea, there are no beasts of burden. Consequently the concept of a yoke placed on animals is completely foreign. Thus, we have struggled greatly in our attempt to translate Matthew 11:29-30.
“Recently, however, I came to learn that a yoke can also refer to a wooden frame that a person places on his neck or shoulders to make it easier to carry a heavy load. Indeed, the Bible often makes figurative use of the word ‘yoke’ as it refers to people and not to beasts of burden (see 1 Kings 12:4-14). As I was pondering that idea, I began to notice that when Engan men carry heavy logs on one shoulder, they often balance the load by supporting it with a small stick placed across the other shoulder. A few weeks ago, it clicked in my mind that the small stick they use to make it easier to carry a heavy log is like a yoke.
“Excited by this realization, I quickly asked my friend Benjamin if the stick that men use to make it easier to carry a heavy log has a name in Enga. Sure enough it does. It is called a pyakende. With great anticipation, I asked the translation team if we could use the word pyakende to translate the word ‘yoke’. After wrestling with the phrasing for a little while, we came up with the following translation: ‘In order to remove the heaviness from your shoulders, take my pyakende. When you have taken it, you will receive rest. As my pyakende helps you, what I give you to carry is not heavy and you will carry it without struggling.’”
“Yoke” is illustrated for use in Bible translations in East Africa by Pioneer Bible Translators like this:
Image owned by PBT and Jonathan McDaniel and licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Isaiah 47:6:
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”.
Yahweh reminds Babylonia that the reason the Israelites are there as captives is because he placed them there. While Israel’s exile is Yahweh’s doing, nevertheless Babylonia’s cruel treatment of the Israelites, especially the elderly, is unforgivable.
I was angry with my people: God does not say why he was angry with Israel. However, 43.22-24 has already noted the reason: Israel’s disobedience and failure to honor Yahweh. With the words my people (as in 1.3 and 40.1), God acknowledges that he still regards Israel as his own special community.
I profaned my heritage elaborates on the statement of God’s anger. The verb profaned (see 43.28) means that God punished his people by removing their special privileges. New International Version suggests “desecrated,” Revised English Bible has “dishonoured,” and New Jerusalem Bible says “rejected.” My heritage is used throughout the Old Testament to indicate that Israel is God’s own possession (see the comments on 19.25). Bible en français courant says “those who belonged to me,” while Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “my land” (similarly Contemporary English Version). Good News Translation expresses this whole line well with “I treated them as no longer mine.”
I gave them into your hand was the result of God’s anger and disowning of his people. This idiomatic expression means God allowed Babylonia to have full power over Israel (see the comments on 36.15); it was not Babylonia’s own power that enabled it to take the people of Israel as captives. Good News Translation says “I put them in your power.” Possible nonfigurative renderings are “I allowed you to conquer them” and “I let you defeat them.”
You showed them no mercy is God’s charge against Babylonia because it treated its captives cruelly. The Hebrew word rendered mercy refers to lenient or considerate treatment of another person. An alternative rendering without negation for this line is “You were [very] cruel to them.” Even though the Hebrew text has no connector at the beginning of this line, Bible en français courant and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch add the contrastive conjunction “But,” which fits well.
On the aged you made your yoke exceedingly heavy: As an example of the Babylonians’ failure to be kind, Yahweh describes the way they mistreated the older generation of Israelites. The aged were surely not the only ones mistreated by the Babylonians, but since old people were particularly weak, their bad treatment stands out as a special example of the cruelty of the Babylonians. Yahweh accuses them of making the forced labor of the elderly too hard, beyond what would normally be expected. The yoke is a metaphor for servitude (see the comments on 9.4; 10.27; 14.25). Bible en français courant makes the significance of the yoke a little clearer in its translation of these two lines: “You crushed the elderly under the weight of your yoke.” However, Good News Translation abandons the metaphor altogether by saying “even the aged you treated harshly.” Contemporary English Version is similar with “but were especially cruel to those who were old.”
Translation examples for this verse are:
• I was angry with my people [Israel],
I regarded them as no longer my own.
I handed them over to you,
but you showed them no mercy;
even the old people you forced to carry a very heavy yoke.
• I was angry with my people
and brought dishonor on my heritage.
I handed them over to you,
but you treated them cruelly,
placing a very heavy burden on even the old people.
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 .
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