land flowing with milk and honey

The phrase that is rendered in English versions as “land flowing with milk and honey” (“milk and syrup” in Goldingay [2018]) is translated into Afar as niqmatak tan baaxoy buqre kee lacah meqehiyya: “a blessed land good for fields and cattle.” (Source: Loren Bliese)

In the interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) it is translated with the existing proverb dziko lamwanaalirenji or “a land of what (type of food) can the child cry for?” (i.e. there is more than enough to eat). (Source: Ernst Wendland in The Bible Translator 1981, p. 107 )

In Kwere it is “good/fertile land.” (Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

The Hebrew word for “honey”, devash, is also used for syrup extracted from figs, dates, and grapes, or from certain types of palm tree. The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey” refers to a land that is fertile and thus rich in pasture, fruit, and the grain and flowers from which bees make honey. (Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators) )

In Russian, the phrase молоко и мед (moloko i med) or “milk and honey” is widely used as an idiom in every-day life. (Source: Reznikov 2020, p. 67)

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Milk and Honey in Ancient Israel .

Spies return from Canaan

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Image taken from He Qi Art . For purchasing prints of this and other artworks by He Qi go to heqiart.com . For other images of He Qi art works in TIPs, see here.

The following is a stained glass window from the Three choir windows in the Marienkirche, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, of the 14th century:

Source: Der gläserne Schatz: Die Bilderbibel der St. Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder), Neuer Berlin Verlag, 2005, copyright for this image: Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologisches Landesmuseum

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 )

See also other stained glass windows from the Marienkirche in Frankfurt.

inclusive vs. exclusive pronoun (Num 13:27)

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 exclusive pronoun, excluding those who did not go to Canaan.

send / deploy (Japanese honorifics)

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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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017.

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “send,” “deploy” or similar in English is translated in the Shinkaiyaku Bible as o-tsukawashi (お遣わし), combining “send” (tsukawashi) with the respectful prefix o-. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

complete verse (Numbers 13:27)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Numbers 13:27:

  • Kupsabiny: “The spies said to Moses, ‘When we went to that country you sent us to, we found that it is a country of milk and honey. Look, here are fruits from that country.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “They told Moses, "We went to the land you sent us. It certainly was flooded with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “They said to Moises, ‘We (excl.) went to the place where you (sing.) caused- us -to-go, and this is a good and productive land. Here are indeed the fruits.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “But this is what they reported to Moses/me: ‘We arrived in the land that you sent us to explore. It is truly a beautiful land, and it is very fertile. Here is some of the fruit.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Numbers 13:27

And they told him introduces the report of the spies, which is given in verses 27-29. The pronoun him refers to Moses, which Good News Translation makes explicit. Although Aaron and the other Israelites are present, as verse 26 makes clear, the spies address the words of their report to Moses as leader (so Alter, page 747).

We came to the land to which you sent us: The spies report that they explored the land of Canaan, as Moses requested. The Hebrew pronoun for you is singular, referring to Moses.

It flows with milk and honey: This figurative expression occurs frequently in the Pentateuch to describe the land of Canaan as “rich and fertile” (Good News Translation), abundant in fruits and crops (see, for example, Exo 3.8; Lev 20.24; Deut 6.3). New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translates this clause more accurately by including the Hebrew focus particle gam in its rendering, saying “it does indeed flow with milk and honey.” Other translations that include it are De Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling with “Really, it flows with milk and honey,” and Alter with “and it’s actually flowing with milk and honey.” Moses repeatedly used this idiom (see, for example, Exo 13.5). Now the eyewitnesses confirm that it is actually (gam) true. We advise translators to keep this idiom as New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, De Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling and Alter have done, or at least to render this clause with a natural idiom of the target language; for example, Chewa says “it is a land of what could a child cry for.”

And this is its fruit: At this point the spies visibly show the fruit they took from Canaan to the gathered assembly. Good News Translation makes this clear by saying “and here is some of its fruit.”

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .