10Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels; shall we bring water for you out of this rock?”
Hand colored stencil print on washi by Sadao Watanabe (1997).
Image taken with permission from the SadaoHanga Catalogue where you can find many more images and information about Sadao Watanabe. For other images of Sadao Watanabe art works in TIPs, see here.
Following is an artwork by Sister Marie Claire , SMMI (1937–2018) from Bengaluru, India:
For more information about images by Sister Marie Claire and ways to purchase them as lithographs, see here . For other images of Sister Marie Claire paintings in TIPs, see here.
The following is a stained glass window in the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Chiang Mai, Thailand:
Photo by Jost Zetzsche
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 )
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 the Israelites.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Numbers 20:10:
Kupsabiny: “Then Moses and Aaron gathered the people in front of that rock and (he) said to (them), ‘Listen please to these words, you rebels, whether water will not be poured out for you from this rock?’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “Moses and Aaron assembled the community before the big rock. And Moses said to them, "Listen, [you] rebellious people, What! Do we have to take water from this rock for you?"” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “Then Aaron and company gathered the entire people in front of the rock/stone, and Moises said to them, ‘[You (plur.)] rebels listen, must we (excl.) give you (plur.) water from this rock?’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “Then Aaron and he/I summoned all the people to gather at the rock. Then Moses/I shouted to them, ‘All you rebellious people, listen! Is it necessary for us to give you water from this rock?’” (Source: Translation for Translators)
The name that is transliterated as “Moses” in English means “taken out of the water,” “saved out of the water,” “a son.” (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )
American Sign Language also uses the sign depicting the horns but also has a number of alternative signs (see here ).
In French Sign Language, a similar sign is used, but it is interpreted as “radiance” (see below) and it culminates in a sign for “10,” signifying the 10 commandments:
The horns that are visible in Michelangelo’s statue are based on a passage in the Latin Vulgate translation (and many Catholic Bible translations that were translated through the 1950ies with that version as the source text). Jerome, the translator, had worked from a Hebrew text without the niqquds, the diacritical marks that signify the vowels in Hebrew and had interpreted the term קרו (k-r-n) in Exodus 34:29 as קֶ֫רֶן — keren “horned,” rather than קָרַו — karan “radiance” (describing the radiance of Moses’ head as he descends from Mount Sinai).
In Swiss-German Sign Language (and Hungarian Sign Language) it is translated with a sign depicting holding a staff. This refers to a number of times where Moses’s staff is used in the context of miracles, including the parting of the sea (see Exodus 14:16), striking of the rock for water (see Exodus 17:5 and following), or the battle with Amalek (see Exodus 17:9 and following).
In Vietnamese (Hanoi) Sign Language it is translated with the sign that depicts the eye make up he would have worn as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. (Source: The Vietnamese Sign Language translation team, VSLBT)
“Moses” in Vietnamese Sign Language, source: SooSL
In Korean Sign Language it is translated with the sign that depicts the arms held up by Moses to assure the Israelites victory over the Amalekites (see Exodus 17:11).
Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.
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 formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).
And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them: The Hebrew verb for gathered and the noun for assembly come from the same Hebrew root (q h l; see the comments on verses 4 and 8).
Hear now, you rebels: Now renders the Hebrew particle naʾ, which makes the imperative here stronger. Moses calls the people rebels when in fact it is he and Aaron who are now the true rebels, for which they will be punished (so Olson, page 129). The Hebrew word for rebels refers to people who resist or protest against some established authority. In the Old Testament this negative reaction is usually manifested against God.
Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?: This is a rhetorical question. Moses is annoyed at the people’s disbelief. Good News Translation expresses more clearly that Moses is angry by saying “Do we have to get water out of this rock for you?” Other languages will have different ways of expressing Moses’ anger; for example, Chewa has “Say, must we do this and cause water to come out this rock for you?” Milgrom (pages 448-456) argues that Moses’ sin is his presumptuous claim that it is he and Aaron who will bring the water from the rock, rather than God. The Hebrew word order puts special emphasis on the phrase out of this rock since it occurs first in this question, which is literally “From this rock shall we bring forth for you water?” The demonstrative pronoun this is used to refer back to the same rock mentioned in verse 8.
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 .
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