וְנָתַשְׁתִּ֥י אֲשֵׁירֶ֖יךָ מִקִּרְבֶּ֑ךָ וְהִשְׁמַדְתִּ֖י עָרֶֽיךָ׃
14and I will uproot your sacred poles from among you
and destroy your towns.
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.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Micah 5:14:
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”.
In verses 13 and 14 the Lord condemns the objects used in pagan worship. Three specific types of object are mentioned, idols and sacred stone pillars in verse 13, and images of the goddess Asherah in verse 14. Idols were images carved out of wood or stone. Their use was forbidden in the Ten Commandments (Exo 20.4). Sacred stone pillars were frequently used in Canaanite fertility religion to represent the male deity, and images of the goddess Asherah were wooden poles that represented the female deity.
The people of Israel had been told to break down the pillars (Exo 23.24) and to cut down the images of Asherah (Exo 34.13), but they had never destroyed all of them. These objects were not only symbols used in pagan worship, but they also showed that the people of Israel had rejected their own God. In order to make the nation pure again it was necessary to remove all such evil things. Since the people had not done so, the Lord says that he himself will do it. It is unlikely, of course that many languages will have terms that exactly fit all of these different kinds of idols, but translators should at least be able to describe them as images, stone pillars, and wooden poles that the pagan peoples worshiped.
Sacred is merely a word that shows that the people considered their idols to have spiritual significance or power. The fact that the pagan people worshiped these idols shows why God was angry about them.
These items are only things that you yourselves have made (“the work of your hands” Revised Standard Version). It is therefore ridiculous for the people to worship such things. Accordingly the Lord will no longer permit the people to worship them. Worship can be translated by such expressions as “to pray to,” “to bow down to,” “to serve,” “to honor,” or “to respect as someone very great.”
At the end of verse 14 the Lord says again that he will destroy your cities (Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version). The repetition of cities, which was already mentioned in verse 11, may be a way of rounding off the list. However, some translations such as Jerusalem Bible, Moffatt, and Phillips translate as “images” or “idols.” This meaning is obtained either by making a change of one letter in the Hebrew text from ʿareka to tsireka (as suggested by, for instance, Deissler), or else by supposing that Hebrew had a word identical in form with the word for city, but bearing the meaning “idol” (Allen). This meaning fits better with the rest of verses 13 and 14.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on Micah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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