16So King Zedekiah swore an oath in secret to Jeremiah, “As the Lord lives, who gave us our lives, I will not put you to death or hand you over to these men who seek your life.”
Cherokee: “putting one’s hand up to someone” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 16)
In Bauzi “swear” can be translated in various ways. In Hebrews 6:13, for instance, it is translated with “bones break apart and decisively speak.” (“No bones are literally broken but by saying ‘break bones’ it is like people swear by someone else in this case it is in relation to a rotting corpse’ bones falling apart. If you ‘break bones’ so to speak when you make an utterance, it is a true utterance.”) In other passages, such as in Matthew 26:72, it’s translated with an expression that implies taking ashes (“if a person wants everyone to know that he is telling the truth about a matter, he reaches down into the fireplace, scoops up some ashes and throws them while saying ‘I was not the one who did that.'”). So in Matthew 26:72 the Bauzi text is: “. . . Peter took ashes and defended himself saying, ‘I don’t know that Nazareth person.'” (Source: David Briley)
The Hebrew and Greek that is often translated as “As the Lord lives, (I swear)” in English is translated in Dan as “I swear before the true living God” to “not to imply that God could die, contrasting with the dead false gods.” (Source: Don Slager)
Similarly, In Elhomwe it is translated as “before the Lord.” (Source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
In the NepaliRevised Version (1977, 1997) it is translated as “taking an oath by the Lord” and in the Simple Nepali Holy Bible (2008) as “I swear by the living Lord.”
Chitra B. Chhetri (in The Bible Translator 2007, p. 64ff. ) comments on this translation: “[In the Nepali context,] theologically, one cannot swear by the life of the deity, because divine beings are not subject to the doctrine of saṃsāra, the binding cycle of life and death, in Hinduism practiced in Nepal. In other words, one cannot speak of life and death of a god. Therefore, one can only swear in the name of the deity. One can, however, swear by the life of a superior human being, because humans are subject to life and death. Syntactically, adjectival usage is natural to the Nepali language in the context in which it is used. It would be natural and meaningful to say adjectivally, ‘I swear by the living Lord.’ However, it would be quite awkward and meaningless to say in a nominal form, ‘I swear by the life of the Lord‘ or a verbal form, ‘I swear that the Lord lives.'”
In Malay, the pronoun beta for the royal “I” (or “my” or “me”) that is used by royals when speaking to people of lower rank, subordinates or commoners to refer to themselves in these verses. This reflects the “language of the court because the monarchy and sultanate in Malaysia are still alive and well. All oral and printed literature (including newspapers and magazines) preserve and glorify the language of the court. Considering that the language of the court is part of the Malaysian language, court language is used sparingly where appropriate, specifically with texts relating to palace life.” (Source: Daud Soesilo in The Bible Translator 2025, p. 263ff.)
Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, the Jarai and the Adamawa Fulfulde translation both use the inclusive pronoun, including everyone.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 38:16:
Kupsabiny: “Then Zedekiah whispered to me, ‘I swear by God who gave us life, I will not kill you nor will I hand you over to these people who want to kill you.’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “But King Zedekia secretly swore to Jeremias. He said, ‘I swear to the living LORD, who gave us life, that I will- not -kill you or hand-over to those who want to kill you.’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “But King Zedekiah secretly promised me, ‘Tell me the truth! And as surely as Yahweh lives, I will not cause you to be executed, and I will not hand you over to those who are wanting to kill you.’” (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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme rare (られ) 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, ikite-rare-ru (生きておられる) or “living” is used.
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