רִגְז֗וּ וְֽאַל־תֶּ֫חֱטָ֥אוּ אִמְר֣וּ בִ֭לְבַבְכֶם עַֽל־מִשְׁכַּבְכֶ֗ם וְדֹ֣מּוּ סֶֽלָה׃
4When you are disturbed, do not sin;
ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah
For the phrase “When you are disturbed, do not sin,” see Ephesians 4:26.
Note that this quote in the New Testament is not taken from the Hebrew Bible but from the Greek Septuagint (LXX) which translates into English as “Be angry, and do not sin.” (Translation by NETS — for the Greek version see the title’s tooltip)
The Hebrew that is translated “silent,” “quiet,” or “keep peace” or similar in English is emphasized in the interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) with the ideophone phee. (Source: Wendland 1998, p. 105)
Philip Noss (in The Bible Translator 1976, p. 100ff. ) explains the function of an ideophone: “The ideophone may be identified with onomatopoeia and other sound words frequently seen in French and English comic strips, but in [many] African languages it comprises a class of words with a very wide range of meaning and usage. They may function verbally, substantively, or in a modifying role similar to adverbs and adjectives. They describe anything that may be experienced: action, sound, color, quality, smell, or emotion. In oral literature they are used not only with great frequency but also with great creativity.”
In Gbaya, the notion of the being quiet or doing something quietly is emphasized with the ideophone sɛ́ɛ́m, which expresses standing still, without moving, quietly, mouth closed.
Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 4:4:
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.
The sense of the first Hebrew verb is disputed; the root meaning seems to be “be excited, perturbed,” whether with fear, anger, or joy. The Septuagint takes it in the sense of anger, and it is in this sense that the passage is quoted in Ephesians 4.26; and that is how Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, Zürcher Bibel, and Bible en français courant have translated it here. But most modern translators and commentators take it in the sense of fear: Briggs, Kirkpatrick, Weiser, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, and others. Certainly this seems more appropriate as a warning to the psalmist’s enemies. If a translator chooses the meaning of anger, the sense of the line must be something like “If you are angry, do not sin” (Bible en français courant) or “Don’t let your anger lead you into sin.”
In many languages it is unnatural to command someone to experience an emotional state such as fear or anger. For this reason the relation between the emotion and the following command is not readily apparent without recasting the anger part as a dependent clause. Many languages express fear in terms of such figures as “trembling heart” or “breath departed.” Here also the rendering may be more meaningful with a subordinate clause expressing the fear; for example, “even when your heart trembles from fear of God’s punishment, do not sin” or “although you are afraid of what might happen to you, do not let this make you sin.”
The next line is literally “talk in your hearts on your beds and be silent,” which is an advice to the psalmist’s enemies to meditate quietly and in private on what the psalmist is saying. New International Version “when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.” The word beds (or, “couches”) may imply nighttime, or else simply privacy (so Weiser); and the verb translated “be silent” may mean “be inactive,” that is, don’t do anything. New Jerusalem Bible has “sigh.”
Some languages express meditation and reflection in ways very close to the Hebrew form. But the same expression in other languages would imply that such a person is mentally unstable. It is therefore sometimes necessary to say “think about these words” or “remember these words.” In many cultures practically the only privacy a person has is at night on his bed. The entire sentence can often be rendered “When you lie down on your bed at night, think about these words and be silent.”
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 .
The following is a presentation by the Psalms: Layer by Layer project, run by Scriptura .
Copyright © Scriptura
Copyright © Scriptura
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)
“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 4 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):
恃主常樂
呼籲公明主。為我伸冤屈。昔曾出我厄。令我得安逸。今者復求主。垂憐申舊德。 嗚呼濁世子。何時知曲直。狂妄安能逞。豈無黑與白。 須知主公明。忠良是所秩。我求主必應。何苦自作孽。 清夜當捫心。一省順與逆。 應獻忠誠祭。順命斯無失。
眾庶喁喁望。何日見時康。吾心惟仰主。願見主容光。 主已將天樂。貯我腔子裏。人情樂豐年。有酒多且旨。豐年誠足樂。美酒豈無味。未若我心中。一團歡愉意。 心曠神亦怡。登榻即成寐。問君何能爾。恃主而已矣。
Transcription into Roman alphabet:
shì zhǔ cháng lè
hū xū gōng míng zhǔ 。 wéi wǒ shēn yuān qū 。 xī zēng chū wǒ è 。 líng wǒ dé ān yì 。 jīn zhě fù qiú zhǔ 。 chuí lián shēn jiù dé 。 wū hū zhuó shì zǐ 。 hé shí zhī qū zhí 。 kuáng wàng ān néng chěng 。 qǐ wú hēi yǔ bái 。 xū zhī zhǔ gōng míng 。 zhōng liáng shì suǒ zhì 。 wǒ qiú zhǔ bì yīng 。 hé kǔ zì zuò niè 。 qīng yè dāng mén xīn 。 yī shěng shùn yǔ nì 。 yīng xiàn zhōng chéng jì 。 shùn mìng sī wú shī 。
zhòng shù yóng yóng wàng 。 hé rì jiàn shí kāng 。 wú xīn wéi yǎng zhǔ 。 yuàn jiàn zhǔ róng guāng 。 zhǔ yǐ jiāng tiān lè 。 zhù wǒ qiāng zǐ lǐ 。 rén qíng lè fēng nián 。 yǒu jiǔ duō qiě zhǐ 。 fēng nián chéng zú lè 。 měi jiǔ qǐ wú wèi 。 wèi ruò wǒ xīn zhōng 。 yī tuán huān yú yì 。 xīn kuàng shén yì yí 。 dēng tà jí chéng mèi 。 wèn jūn hé néng ěr 。 shì zhǔ ér yǐ yǐ 。
With thanks to Simon Wong.
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