27They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them.
The Greek phrase that is (awkwardly) rendered as “people were marrying and being given in marriage” in some English versions (Good News Translation: “men and women married”) is rendered more straight-forwardly in Chechen and Khakas which uses different words for “marry” for men and women. (Source: David Clark)
In Tlahuitoltepec Mixe it is translated as “no one will go as a wife-seeker, and no one will cause his child to be married.” (Source: B. Moore / G. Turner in Notes on Translation 1967, p. 1ff.)
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “flood” in English is translated in the German Luther Bible as Sintflut and the influential Dutch Bibles Statenvertaling and Nieuwe Vertaling as zondvloed. Both terms originally mean “great / permanent flood” but have folk-etymologically been reinterpreted as “sin flood” (“sin” in Dutch is zonde and in German Sünde).
Today these terms are used in either language figuratively as well (“a lot of water” or “a lot”). (Source: Jost Zetzsche)
Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 17:27:
Noongar: “People always ate and drank, and men and women always married, until the day when Noah got into the boat and much rain came and drowned all of them.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Uma: “At the time of the prophet Nuh, people continually ate, drank, getting married and marrying, any old way, until the prophet Nuh entered into a big boat and a flood killed them all.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “At that time they ate and drank, got wives and husbands until the day was reached when Nu went into the ship. Then God flooded (lasey an especially big flood) the world and they all perished/were destroyed.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Because a long time ago, at the time of Noah, the only thing people were thinking about was happy times, and they ate and they drank and they got married, until Noah entered into the large boat called the ark, and when the water got deep, people were all drowned.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Because at that time they were continuing to eat and drink and get-married until the day that plural Noe entered the ark. Right afterwards the earth was flooded and they all drowned.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “For at that time, the people were keeping on eating and drinking and marrying until Noe boarded that boat he had made. When the flood came which dissolved/destroyed the world, the people had no awareness of danger. Well what else but what happened was, they were all wiped out.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
The Hebrew, Latin; Ge’ez and Greek that is transliterated as “Noah” in English is translated in Spanish Sign Language with a sign that combines the letter N + “boat.” (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
The following is a stained glass window depicting Noah by Endre Odon Hevezi and Gyula Bajo from 1965 for the Debre Libanos Monastery, Oromia, Ethiopia:
Photo by Timothy A. Gonsalves, hosted by Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Stained glass is not just highly decorative, it’s a medium which has been used to express important religious messages for centuries. Literacy was not widespread in the medieval and Renaissance periods and the Church used stained glass and other artworks to teach the central beliefs of Christianity. In Gothic churches, the windows were filled with extensive narrative scenes in stained glass — like huge and colorful picture storybooks — in which worshipers could ‘read’ the stories of Christ and the saints and learn what was required for their religious salvation. (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum )
Living Water is produced for the Bible translation movement in association with Lutheran Bible Translators. Lyrics derived from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®).
ēsthion, epinon, egamoun, egamizonto ‘they ate, drank, married, were married.’ The asyndetic verbs in the imperfect tense depict the steady flow of normal life. For eating and drinking cf. on 5.30. For gameō cf. on 14.20.
gamizomai (also 20.35) ‘to be given in marriage,’ ‘to be married,’ of women.
achri hēs hēmeras ‘till the day on which,’ cf. on 1.20, and note the singular hēmeras as contrasted with the plural hēmerais in v. 26.
eis tēn kibōton ‘into the ark.’
kibōtos ‘ark,’ i.e. a floating house, cf. IDB I, 222.
kai ēlthen ho kataklusmos kai apōlesen pantas ‘and the flood came and destroyed all.’ The clause is best understood as being independent and not modified by achri hēs hēmeras, cf. Plummer. pantas refers to the subject of ēsthion etc.
kataklusmos ‘flood,’ ‘deluge.’
Translation:
They, or, ‘everybody,’ ‘people,’ referring to Noah’s contemporaries.
The series of verbs may better be rendered in pairs; similarly in the next verse.
They married, they were given in marriage, describing the event from the viewpoint of the man and of the woman, respectively. Some renderings used lit. mean, ‘married and caused-to-marry’ (Bahasa Indonesia), ‘took wife and were-caused-to-take-husband’ (Toraja-Sa’dan), ‘acquired (wives) and were-acquired (by husbands)’ (Shona 1963), ‘paid-the-bride-price and had-the-bride-price-for-them’ (Shona 1966, similarly Batak Toba), ‘took-wife, took-husband’ (Tae’ 1933, and, in reversed order, Javanese); or, using one verb, ‘men and women married’ (Sranan Tongo), ‘they married-each-other’ (Trukese, Pohnpeian, Kituba). The reference is not to marriages arranged by partners themselves versus marriages contracted through intermediaries (as a literal rendering would mean in Tagalog), nor to two stages in the marriage process, the actual marriage and the negotiations leading up to it. For various renderings of to marry cf. also 14.20, and references.
Entered, cf. on “getting into” in 5.3.
Ark, or, ‘big boat/ship.’
The flood came, or, ‘overflowing water, or, a sweeping flood, or, a heavy rainstorm, or, much rain came’ (cf. East Nyanja, Yao, Trukese, Shona). Elsewhere a specific term for a mythical flood is available, e.g. in Marathi, Zarma, West Nyanja. Further necessary adjustments may lead to something like, ‘it flooded’ (Tagalog), ‘the water (of the sea/rivers) rose (or, overflowed the land).’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.
People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage: The verbs eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage refer to normal activities. People ate and drank every day, and it was common to have weddings. In some languages it may be necessary to indicate in some way that this is a list of normal activities. For example:
People were ⌊doing the same things they always did,⌋ eating, drinking, marrying…
17:27a
People were eating and drinking: The phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as were eating and drinking refers to normal daily eating and drinking. It does not imply that the people were eating and drinking too much or becoming intoxicated. They were doing what they usually did.
In some languages it may be natural to express these two actions with one word or phrase. For example:
People were eating their dinners/meals
People were: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as People were is more literally “they were.” It refers generally to the people who were alive in Noah’s time. Refer to the people in a natural way in your language.
17:27b
marrying and being given in marriage: The phrase marrying and being given in marriage indicate that men and women were getting married. This statement has two parts:
(a) marrying, which refers to men seeking wives and marrying them;
(b) being given in marriage, which refers to women being given to men to marry.
These two parts have almost the same meaning. In some languages it may be good to state the meaning only once. For example:
men and women married (Good News Translation) -or-
they were marrying (NET Bible) -or-
getting married (Contemporary English Version)
being given in marriage: This phrase refers to a custom that was common in Jewish culture. A father arranged a marriage for his daughter. If a man had other female relatives who were dependent on him, he could also arrange marriages for them.
In cultures where this custom is well known, there may be a special way to speak about it. Consider whether you can use this way in your translation.
The phrase being given in marriage is passive. In some languages it may be necessary to make it active. For example:
fathers were giving their daughters in marriage
17:27c
up to the day Noah entered the ark: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates literally as the day here refers to the time that Noah (and his family) went into the ark. The context of the flood implies that the people stopped doing what they normally did because the rains came and prevented them. Other ways to translate this are:
right up to the time Noah entered his boat (New Living Translation (2004)) -or-
until Noah entered the ark
the ark: The ark was the large wooden boat that Noah built. It saved Noah and his family from the flood. Refer to your translation of Genesis 6:14.
17:27d
Then: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Then introduces what happened after Noah entered the ark. Introduce this event in a natural way in your language.
the flood came: The phrase the flood refers to the flood that is described in Genesis 7. Heavy rain caused deep water to flow over the whole earth. Some languages do not have a single word for flood, and in other languages people do not say that a flood “comes.” Describe the flood in a natural way in your language. Some ways to do this are:
waters flooded the earth -or-
big water happened everywhere -or-
rains came too much and covered everything -or-
it rained heavily and water surged over the whole earth/ground
and destroyed them all: In this context the phrase them all refers to all the people who were not in the ark. Noah and his family were safe in the ark.
The word destroyed is used both here and in 17:29. Here it indicates that the flood killed all the other people except the ones in the ark with Noah.
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