Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 139:12:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“nevertheless that darkness will not be darkness to You
night will shine like afternoon,
for darkness is like light to You.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“the darkness will not be dark for You,
and for You the night will shine ablaze like the day,
for You night and day are exactly the same.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“But even the darkness (is) not dark for you (sing.),
and the night (is) just as light as the day.
For darkness and light (are) just the same to you (sing.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Laarim:
“even then you see in the darkness
the darkness be the same with the day,
for the darkness is the same as light to you.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“giza nayo haikufichi kitu chochote,
usiku unamulika kama vile mchana,
giza na nuru kwako vinafanana tu.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“but even if that happened, the darkness would not be darkness for you!
For you, the night is as bright as the daytime is, because for you, daylight and darkness are not different/the same.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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 Translator2002, 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.”
The following is a lyrical rendition of Psalm 139 into English by Mary Herbert , Countess of Pembroke (née Sidney, 1561 – 1621), authored c. 1594 as part of the Sidney Psalms :
O Lord, in me there lieth nought
But to thy search revealèd lies,
For when I sit
Thou markest it;
No less thou notest when I rise;
Yea, closest closet of my thought
Hath open windows to thine eyes.
Thou walkest with me when I walk;
When to my bed for rest I go,
I find thee there,
And everywhere:
Not youngest thought in me doth grow,
No, not one word I cast to talk
But yet unuttered thou dost know.
If forth I march, thou goest before,
If back I turn, thou com’st behind:
So forth nor back
Thy guard I lack,
Nay on me too, thy hand I find.
Well I thy wisdom may adore,
But never reach with earthy mind.
To shun thy notice, leave thine eye,
O whither might I take my way?
To starry sphere?
Thy throne is there.
To dead men’s undelightsome stay?
There is thy walk, and there to lie
Unknown, in vain I should assay.
O Sun, whom light nor flight can match,
Suppose thy lightful flightful wings
Thou lend to me,
And I could flee
As far as thee the ev’ning brings:
Even led to West he would me catch,
Nor should I lurk with western things.
Do thou thy best, O secret night,
In sable veil to cover me:
Thy sable veil
Shall vainly fail;
With day unmask’d my night shall be,
For night is day, and darkness light,
O father of all lights, to thee.
Each inmost piece in me is thine:
While yet I in my mother dwelt,
All that me clad
From thee I had.
Thou in my frame hast strangely dealt:
Needs in my praise thy works must shine
So inly them my thoughts have felt.
Thou, how my back was beam-wise laid,
And raft’ring of my ribs, dost know;
Know’st every point
Of bone and joint,
How to this whole these parts did grow,
In brave embroid’ry fair array’d,
Though wrought in shop both dark and low.
Nay, fashionless, ere form I took,
Thy all-and-more beholding eye
My shapeless shape
Could not escape:
All these time-framed successively
Ere one had being, in the book
Of thy foresight enroll’d did lie.
My God, how I these studies prize,
That do thy hidden workings show!
Whose sum is such
No sum so much,
Nay, summ’d as sand they sumless grow.
I lie to sleep, from sleep I rise,
Yet still in thought with thee I go.
My God, if thou but one wouldst kill,
Then straight would leave my further chase
This cursèd brood
Inur’d to blood,
Whose graceless taunts at thy disgrace
Have aimed oft; and hating still
Would with proud lies thy truth outface.
Hate not I them, who thee do hate?
Thine, Lord, I will the censure be.
Detest I not
The cankered knot
Whom I against thee banded see?
O Lord, thou know’st in highest rate
I hate them all as foes to me.
Search me, my God, and prove my heart,
Examine me, and try my thought;
And mark in me
If ought there be
That hath with cause their anger wrought.
If not (as not) my life’s each part,
Lord, safely guide from danger brought.
In these verses the psalmist uses the figures of darkness and light to show how impossible it is to hide from Yahweh. In verse 11a the Hebrew verb translated cover is found elsewhere in the sense of crush, bruise (Gen 3.15; Job 9.17); here this is taken to mean, in a general sense, to overwhelm or to hide. New Jerusalem Bible has “conceal,” and New English Bible “steal over me.” Some, however, propose to change the Hebrew to a form of the verb which means “to cover” (so New American Bible). Most translations find that the Hebrew text as it is yields a satisfactory sense. In verse 11b instead of the Masoretic text “and the light around me (become) darkness,” the Qumran manuscript has “the night (become) a belt around me,” which Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible, and New English Bible follow. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project says: “There are two possible ways of interpreting this part of the V., either: ‘(… even darkness covers me,) and the light is night around me’, or: ‘(… even in darkness he [i.e. God] watches me,) and during the night he is light about me…’.” The Good News Translation form “ask the darkness to hide me” presents difficulties in translation, in that an inanimate object is being asked to perform an action. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy provides a model that may be more easily followed: “If I thought of hiding in the darkness, or that the light that surrounds me be turned into darkness….”
Not even the possibility of changing light into darkness would be of any help to the psalmist, were he to attempt to flee from Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is no difference between darkness and light (verse 12). Biblia Dios Habla Hoy goes on to say in verse 12a “the darkness would not hide me from you,” which can also be rendered “but I could not hide from you in the darkness.”
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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