flight

The Hebrew in Psalm 21:12 that is translated as “flight” or similar in English is translated in the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) similar to the original Hebrew with the idiom “showing one’s back.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

complete verse (Psalm 21:12)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 21:12:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “for you will chase them and they will show their backs
    when you will point them with your arrows.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “The king will strike them with an arrow.
    and they will turn and run away.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “For they will-flee when they will see that you (sing.) (are) now ready to-punish them, as-if you (sing.)are-stretching-out your (sing.) bow at them.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Eastern Bru:
    “Surely this king will shoot arrows (from a crossbow) at them, making them all scatter.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “because they will be turn and escape,
    when they see your arrows pointing at them.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Utawasababisha kukimbia,
    wakati unawalenga mishale usoni pao.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “You will cause them to run away
    by shooting arrows at them.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.

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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.

Honorary "are" construct denoting God ("aim")

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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) 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, neraw-are-ru (狙われる) or “aim” is used.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Translation commentary on Psalm 21:11 - 21:12

The evil plans and plots of the enemies of the king will not succeed (verse 11). It will be better in most translations to say specifically “Your enemies” or “The king’s enemies” instead of they, which could be taken by the reader to refer to “their offspring … their children” of verse 10.

The first verb in verse 11 in Hebrew (Revised Standard Version plan) means “to stretch out, extend, direct toward,” in the sense of directing a plot against someone; the second verbal phrase (devise mischief) is the same as the one used in 10.2b (“schemes … devised”). Plan evil in line a is matched by the synonymous devise mischief in line b. In modern English mischief rarely carries the implication of something evil or destructive; it is normally synonymous with “trick” or “prank,” whereas here the meaning is more serious, “wicked plan.” Revised Standard Version makes the two lines in verse 11 conditional; the translator may prefer to follow the Good News Translation, which presents the actions as facts, things actually done (so New Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible).

They plan evil is difficult to render clearly in that form because it is not indicated what the evil refers to. Therefore in many languages it will be necessary to say “they think of evil things to do against him,” or idiomatically, “their minds give birth to bad things they can do to him.”

Devise mischief must sometimes be rendered as “they think up ways to injure him.”

Succeed is sometimes rendered idiomatically as “seeing goodness” or “touching happiness.”

In verse 12 Good News Translation has reversed the two lines for easier understanding. Put them to flight translates what is literally “you will place their back,” that is, in flight. New English Bible translates differently: “you will catch them round the shoulders.”

Bows translates the word “bow strings,” a meaning the Hebrew word has here only; elsewhere it means tent ropes. Good News Translation has chosen to say “shoot his arrows” as being more natural and clearer than aim … your bows. It may be that the psalmist means the enemies turn and run when they see the king aiming his arrows at them (so New International Version); but it seems more natural to take the phrase to mean that they run when he actually shoots his arrows. (Of course it is implied that the king’s warriors are all shooting arrows, not the king alone; but it seems better to stay with the literal form of the text here.)

It is not necessary to represent the literal aim at their faces; New Jerusalem Bible is somewhat ludicrous with its rendering: “you will make them turn tail, by shooting your arrows in their faces.”

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 .

Psalm 21 as classical Chinese poetry

John Wu Ching-hsiung (1899-1986) was a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang, a renowned jurist who studied in Europe and the United States, and served as a professor of law at Soochow University, as a judge and the Acting President of the Shanghai Provisional Court, and as the Vice President of the Commission for the Drafting of the Constitution of the Republic of China, before becoming the Minister of the Republic of China to the Holy See. Wu has written extensively, not only on law but also on Chinese philosophy, and has also written his autobiography, Beyond East and West, in English. Wu was a devout Catholic and had a personal relationship with Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). Wu began translating the the Psalms in 1938, and was encouraged by Chiang to translate the entire New Testament, which he corrected in his own handwriting. (…) John Wu Ching-hsiung’s translation of the Psalms (first draft in 1946, revised in 1975) was translated into Literary Chinese in the form of poetic rhyme, with attention paid to the style of writing. According to the content and mood of the different chapters of the original psalm, Wu chose Chinese poetic forms such as tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter [4, 5 or 7 syllables/Chinese characters per stanza], and the [less formal] Sao style, and sometimes more than two poetic forms were used in a single poem. (Source: Simon Wong)

John Wu Ching-hsiung himself talks about his celebrated and much-admired (though difficult-to-understand) translation in his aforementioned autobiography: (Click or tap here to see)

“Nothing could have been farther from my mind than to translate the Bible or any parts of it with a view to publishing it as an authorized version. I had rendered some of the Psalms into Chinese verse, but that was done as a part of my private devotion and as a literary hobby. When I was in Hongkong in 1938, I had come to know Madame H. H. Kung [Soong Ai-ling], and as she was deeply interested in the Bible, I gave her about a dozen pieces of my amateurish work just for her own enjoyment. What was my surprise when, the next time I saw her, she told me, “My sister [Soong Mei-ling] has written to say that the Generalissimo [Chiang Kai-shek] likes your translation of the Psalms very much, especially the first, the fifteenth, and the twenty-third, the Psalm of the Good Shepherd!”

“In the Autumn of 1940, when I was in Chungking, the Generalissimo invited me several times to lunch with him and expressed his appreciation of the few pieces that he had read. So I sent him some more. A few days later I received a letter from Madame Chiang [Soong Mei-ling], dated September 21, 1940, in which she said that they both liked my translation of the few Psalms I had sent them. ‘For many years,’ she wrote, ‘the Generalissimo has been wanting to have a really adequate and readable Wen-li (literary) translation of the Bible. He has never been able to find anyone who could undertake the matter.’ The letter ends up by saying that I should take up the job and that ‘the Generalissimo would gladly finance the undertaking of this work.’

“After some preliminary study of the commentaries, I started my work with the Psalms on January 6, 1943, the Feast of the Epiphany.

“I had three thousand years of Chinese literature to draw upon. The Chinese vocabulary for describing the beauties of nature is so rich that I seldom failed to find a word, a phrase, and sometimes even a whole line to fit the scene. But what makes such Psalms so unique is that they bring an intimate knowledge of the Creator to bear upon a loving observation of things of nature. I think one of the reasons why my translation is so well received by the Chinese scholars is that I have made the Psalms read like native poems written by a Chinese, who happens to be a Christian. Thus to my countrymen they are at once familiar and new — not so familiar as to be jejune, and not so new as to be bizarre. I did not publish it as a literal translation, but only as a paraphrase.

“To my greatest surprise, [my translation of the Psalms] sold like hot dogs. The popularity of that work was beyond my fondest dreams. Numberless papers and periodicals, irrespective of religion, published reviews too good to be true. I was very much tickled when I saw the opening verse of the first Psalm used as a headline on the front page of one of the non-religious dailies.”

A contemporary researcher (Lindblom 2021) mentions this about Wu’s translation: “Wu created a unique and personal work of sacred art that bears the imprint of his own admitted love and devotion, a landmark achievement comparable to Antoni Gaudi’s Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain. Although its use is still somewhat limited today, it continues to attract readers for the aforementioned qualities, and continues to be used in prayers and music by those who desire beauty and an authentic Chinese-sounding text that draws from China’s ancient traditions.”

The translation of Psalm 21 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter and the rhyme scheme is -ong (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):

勝利謝恩

仰賴主大德。吾王喜氣冲。荷恩樂無極。陶然醉春風。 心願悉已償。所求靡不從。 先意介景福。寵遇一何隆。更以純金冕。殷勤加其首。 王求保其命。主錫無量壽。 英名仗神助。光榮仰天佑。沐浴芳澤中。美德萃其躬。 優游恩光下。天樂湧其衷。 王惟主是怙。慈惠貫始終。 行見我聖主。奮臂逐群凶。 群凶懾主威。若處紅爐中。天威震霹靂。燒盡妖魔蹤。 斬草在除根。一掃謬種空。 若輩懷叵測。對主施頑攻。奸圖焉能逞。分散如飄蓬。 主必對眾逆。從容挽神弓。 赫赫天地宰。稜威萬古同。吾人當引吭。高歌造化功。

Transcription into Roman alphabet with the rhyme scheme highlighted:

shèng lì xiè ēn

yǎng lài zhǔ dà dé 。 wú wáng xǐ qì chōng 。 hé ēn lè wú jí 。 táo rán zuì chūn fēng 。 xīn yuàn xī yǐ cháng 。 suǒ qiú mí bù cóng 。 xiān yì jiè jǐng fú 。 chǒng yù yī hé lóng 。 gēng yǐ chún jīn miǎn 。 yīn qín jiā qí shǒu 。 wáng qiú bǎo qí mìng 。 zhǔ xī wú liáng shòu 。 yīng míng zhàng shén zhù 。 guāng róng yǎng tiān yòu 。 mù yù fāng zé zhōng 。 měi dé cuì qí gōng 。 yōu yóu ēn guāng xià 。 tiān lè yǒng qí zhōng 。 wáng wéi zhǔ shì hù 。 cí huì guàn shǐ zhōng 。 xíng jiàn wǒ shèng zhǔ 。 fèn bì zhú qún xiōng 。 qún xiōng shè zhǔ wēi 。 ruò chǔ hóng lú zhōng 。 tiān wēi zhèn pī lì 。 shāo jìn yāo mó zōng 。 zhǎn cǎo zài chú gēn 。 yī sǎo miù zhǒng kōng 。 ruò bèi huái pǒ cè 。 duì zhǔ shī wán gōng 。 jiān tú yān néng chěng 。 fēn sàn rú piāo péng 。 zhǔ bì duì zhòng nì 。 cóng róng wǎn shén gōng 。 hè hè tiān dì zǎi 。 léng wēi wàn gǔ tóng 。 wú rén dāng yǐn háng 。 gāo gē zào huà gōng 。

With thanks to Simon Wong.