there is no health in my bones

The Hebrew in Psalm 38:3 that is translated as “there is no health in my bones” or similar in English is translated in Kwere with the idiom “my bones are bursting.” (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

there is no soundness in my flesh

The Hebrew in Psalm 38:3 that is translated as “there is no soundness in my flesh” or similar in English is translated in Makonde idiomatically as “there is no healthy place in my body.” (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)

no health in bones

In Gbaya, the notion of softness of bones in Psalm 38:3 is emphasized with the ideophone pútú-pútú, which refers to something very soft, fragile, like an invertebrate.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

complete verse (Psalm 38:3)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 38:3:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “Because of your rage there is no health in my body;
    my bones have no strength because of my sin.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “Because you are angry, I have become ill.
    Because of my sin, my bones are exhausted.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “The feeling of my whole body (is) not good because of your (sing.) anger with my sins.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Eastern Bru:
    “Because you are angry, my body is no longer like before. Because of my sin I feel heavy pain all over my body.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “I am sick, because of your anger,
    my bones are not good because of my sin.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Mwili wote unaumwa,
    kwa sababu ya hasira zako.
    Nayo na mifupa yangu inateseka,
    kwa sababu ya dhambi zangu.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “Because you have been angry with me,
    I am suffering great pain.
    Because of my sin,
    my whole body is diseased.” (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.

Translation commentary on Psalm 38:3 - 38:4

The psalmist describes his illness as no soundness in my flesh and no health in my bones. Both flesh and bones denote the total being, the whole body. It is impossible to say with certainty what his disease was, if, in fact, the language describes an actual disease and is not simply conventional language in a lament of this kind to describe complete physical and emotional distress. Some commentators conjecture a skin disease, such as leprosy. In verse 3b health translates shalom (see comments on “peace” in 29.11).

The psalmist recognizes his illness as being due to Yahweh’s indignation and to his own sin; there is no contradiction here, since in the thinking of the psalmist God’s anger is caused by the sinning. The translator will notice that Good News Translation has placed the cause, “your anger,” before “great pain” in the first line, and placed the cause, “my sins,” after “diseased” in the second line. The translator should examine which set of relations is most natural in the receptor language, and which provides the reader with the best understanding and poetic effect. The Hebrew order is condition then cause in both lines.

In verse 4 the psalmist likens his sins to a flood which threatens to drown him (literally they have gone over my head), and to a burden too heavy for me. Good News Translation has taken my iniquities … over my head to be like a “flood.” If the translator adopts this possibility, very often some syntactic adjustments will be required; for example, “I am like a man drowning in a flood, my sins are so many” or “My sins are so many they are like a flood and I am drowning.” One may prefer to avoid the flood imagery and say, for example, “My sins pile up higher than my head”; see New Jerusalem Bible “My sins stand higher than my head.” The figure of a burden, or a load, is in many languages a natural one to use with sin or guilt, or with unwelcome responsibilities or activities.

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 .