שָׁ֭ם אֳנִיּ֣וֹת יְהַלֵּכ֑וּן לִ֝וְיָתָ֗ן זֶֽה־יָצַ֥רְתָּ לְשַֽׂחֶק־בּֽוֹ׃
26There go the ships
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.
In Gbaya, the notion of ships on the water in Psalm 104:26 is emphasized with the ideophone serere-serere that refers to floating on water, like a canoe.
Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)
The Hebrew, Latin and Greek that is translated “boat” or “ship” in English is translated in Chichimeca-Jonaz as “that with which we can walk on water” (source: Ronald D. Olson in Notes on Translation January, 1968, p. 15ff.), in Chitonga as a term in combination with bwato or “dugout canoe” (source: Wendland 1987, p. 72), and in Tangale as inj am or “canoe-of water” (inj — “canoe” — on its own typically refers to a traditional type of carved-out log for sleeping) (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin).
In Kouya it is translated as ‘glʋ ‘kadʋ — “big canoe.”
Philip Saunders (p. 231) explains how the Kouya team arrived at that conclusion:
“Acts chapter 27 was a challenge! It describes Paul’s sea voyage to Italy, and finally Rome. There is a storm at sea and a shipwreck on Malta, and the chapter includes much detailed nautical vocabulary. How do you translate this for a landlocked people group, most of whom have never seen the ocean? All they know are small rivers and dugout canoes.
“We knew that we could later insert some illustrations during the final paging process which would help the Kouya readers to picture what was happening, but meanwhile we struggled to find or invent meaningful terms. The ‘ship’ was a ‘big canoe’ and the ‘passengers’ were ‘the people in the big canoe’; the ‘crew’ were the ‘workers in the big canoe’; the ‘pilot’ was the ‘driver of the big canoe’; the ‘big canoe stopping place’ was the ‘harbour’, and the ‘big canoe stopping metal’ was the ‘anchor’!”
In Lokạạ it is translated as ukalangkwaa, lit. “English canoe.” “The term was not coined for the Bible translation, but rather originated in colonial times when the English arrived in Nigeria on ships. The indigenous term for a canoe was modified to represent the large, ocean-going ship of the English.” (Source: J.A. Naudé, C.L. Miller Naudé, J.O. Obono in Acta Theologica 43/2, 2023, p. 129ff. )
See also ships of Tarshish, harbor, anchor, and sailor.
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated in English as “Leviathan” is translated in Poqomchi’ as “monster crocodile” (source: Ronald Ross), in Kalanga as “a monster of the sea called Leviathan” (source: project-specific notes in Paratext), and in Hiligaynon as “the dragon Leviatan” (source: Hiligaynon Back Translation).
Scholars are divided in the details of the meaning of this word, but all are agreed that it refers to a monster that lives in water. The word seems to be related to a Hebrew root that means “to twist.” Some believe that the notion of livyathan is related to ancient Egyptian beliefs about a mythical monster crocodile that was thought to be responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile and for causing eclipses of the sun. The passages in Job 41:1 and Psalms 74:14 support this view. In Psalms 74:13 and 14 livyathan occurs in parallel with another word tannin, which refers to a monster that lives in the water. In Ezekiel 29:3 tanim is described as having powerful jaws and scales. The similarity to a crocodile has been noted by many commentators.
Others relate this monster to Babylonian myths about the chaos dragon Tiamat. The Ugaritic texts refer to a similar monster called lotan, which is the Ugaritic form of livyathan. It seems possible that this is the reference in Isaiah 27:1. The probability is that the name is used in both senses in the Bible.
There is general agreement among Jewish scholars that tannin is the more generic word for “sea monster”, while behemoth and livyathan are the names of two of those monsters. This is reflected in 2 Esdras 6:49 and 52, where leviathan is clearly a proper name for one of these monsters.
Crocodiles are the largest of all reptiles. The species found in the Nile valley is the Nile Crocodile Crocodylus niloticus. In biblical times these crocodiles also lived in the larger rivers of the land of Israel, and another species lived in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia.
Crocodiles look like enormous lizards with large teeth, and they often reach more than 5 meters (16 feet) in length. Their skin is covered in thick fleshy scales. They live in rivers and in river estuaries and come out of the water onto land to sun themselves for long periods each day. When they are in the water they can stay submerged for ten minutes or more.
They feed on fish that they catch in the water, or lie in wait, wholly or partly submerged until some animal or person comes to drink. They then leap out of the water and seize their prey and throw or drag it into the water where they drown it. They then wedge the prey under a log or between rocks or reeds and tear large pieces from the carcass by seizing the flesh in their teeth and twisting themselves over and over until the flesh comes loose. They then swallow the meat without chewing it. In areas where these crocodiles live, people are killed every year by them.
The monster crocodile of the Egyptians, however, was not a real crocodile but a mythical one of gigantic proportions, which was associated with the annual flooding of the Nile River. It was believed to be so big that whenever it entered the Nile, it caused the river to overflow its banks.
Leviathan symbolized the Egyptian nation and probably its gods; it also symbolized the two mighty nations of Assyria and Babylon. Thus it symbolized the great enemies of Israel.
In most translations the word is transliterated from the Hebrew rather than translated, but the name by itself conveys little to the average reader. In languages where crocodiles are well known, the more meaningful expression “the giant crocodile Leviathan” can be used in the Job and Psalms passages. Then, in the Isaiah passage, where the text itself identifies Leviathan as a serpent (or reptile), the name can be used by itself. In some societies, where there are beliefs about mythical monster serpents or crocodiles associated with the flooding of rivers, the local name for the mythical monster can be used, with a footnote to indicate that in Hebrew the monster’s name is livyathan and that it represented the enemies of Israel.
Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 104:26:
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.
Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern 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.
In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.
Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”
In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.
Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)
In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”
In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.
See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.
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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme rare (られ) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, tsuku-rare-ru (造られる) or “create” is used.
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
Now the psalmist (verse 24) breaks into praise of Yahweh’s wisdom in creating so many different things. The expression In wisdom and Good News Translation‘s “How wisely” will have to be recast in some languages to say, for example, “You were very wise when you made…” or “Because you are very wise, you made….” In line c the word creatures translates a Hebrew word which occurs in Psalms only here and in 105.21; it seems to mean possessions, property. Most translations have creatures or “creations.” The verb related to creatures can mean either “acquire” or “create” (see 139.13a); and in Genesis 14.22 the verb is used to speak of God as the Creator. In some languages creatures will have to be rendered as “the animals which you created” or “the things you gave life to.”
In verse 25 the sea, great and wide, is singled out, emphasizing the fact that, like the moon and the sun in verse 19, it too is a part of God’s creation and is entirely subordinate to him. Likewise all living beings in the seas are God’s creation.
The mention of ships in verse 26a is rather strange, since they can hardly be counted as Yahweh’s creation; some (see Weiser) have proposed to change to a word meaning “monsters,” but this has not been widely accepted. Briggs attributes the line to a later unimaginative editor. These are, of course, sailing ships.
For Leviathan see 74.14; this huge sea monster is also God’s creation. The Hebrew text may mean either (1) “Leviathan, that one you made to play in it (that is, in the ocean)” (Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, New International Version, New English Bible footnote); or (2) “Leviathan, that one you made to play with” (Weiser, New English Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible, Bible en français courant, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Good News Translation footnote, Dahood; see Job 41.5). The majority favor (2), and the translator may prefer it.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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