complete verse (Matthew 23:38)

Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 23:38:

  • Uma: “So that your know / For your information: this house of worship of yours here will be abandoned by God.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “Look, God has now rejected/turned-his-back-on your place.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Your dwelling place will be very lonely because I am having done with you.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “Therefore you will be responsible, because God will abandon/leave you.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Well, since you are saying no to this aid/mercy of his, God will now just leave alone your city to be destroyed, including this Templo.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “Now God will separate from you.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

formal pronoun: Jesus addressing his disciples and common people

Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

Here, Jesus is addressing his disciples, individuals and/or crowds with the formal pronoun, showing respect.

In most Dutch translations, Jesus addresses his disciples and common people with the informal pronoun, whereas they address him with the formal form.

2nd person pronoun with low register (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 second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used anata (あなた) is typically used when the speaker is humbly addressing another person.

In these verses, however, omae (おまえ) is used, a cruder second person pronoun, that Jesus for instance chooses when chiding his disciples. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also first person pronoun with low register and third person pronoun with low register.

Translation commentary on Matthew 23:38

As previously, Behold seeks to capture the attention of the audience just prior to an important point. But many languages will not have a word or phrase that corresponds directly to this. Good News Translation has “And so,” and others, for example Barclay, simply drop it. “Well then” is one possibility.

House may refer to the entire city of Jerusalem, or it may be limited to the Temple (12.4; 21.13), and chapter 24 opens with the remark that “Jesus left the temple.” Accordingly, it seems that Matthew intends for his readers to understand that all events between 21.23 and 23.39 took place within the precincts of the Temple compound. One may then follow Good News Translation‘s “And so your Temple….”

To say that the Temple is forsaken often raises the question “By whom?” Since it is God’s dwelling, translators may have to say “God has left your Temple.” Barclay has “God no longer has his home among you.” Another possible interpretation is that reference is to the Temple’s impending destruction, when people will no longer be coming there to worship: “So there will be no one in your Temple.” Note that Good News Translation uses a future tense here, which may be more natural.

As the RSV footnote points out, and desolate (one word in the Greek text) is absent from some ancient manuscripts. Since Jesus is obviously alluding to Jeremiah 22.5 (where the word is present in the Septuagint, though in the form of a verb rather than of an adjective), it may be argued that it was later introduced into the Gospel in order to make Matthew’s text conform more closely to that of the Septuagint. On the other hand, the textual evidence for its inclusion is favorable, and according to TC-GNT, the judgment of the committee for the UBS Greek text is that some scribes must have omitted it because of the feeling that after forsaken it is repetitious. Therefore the decision of the committee was to include it in the text, though with a “C” rating, indicating a considerable degree of doubt regarding what may have been the original text. Jerusalem Bible includes the word in the text, though accompanied by a footnote; New English Bible omits it from the text, also accompanied by a footnote.

Desolate means “empty.” The sentence can be rendered “God has left your Temple, and it is empty.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .