יְֽהוָ֗ה בֹּ֭קֶר תִּשְׁמַ֣ע קוֹלִ֑י בֹּ֥קֶר אֶֽעֱרָךְ־לְ֝ךָ֗ וַאֲצַפֶּֽה׃
3O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I plead my case to you and watch.
The Hebrew that is translated as “before you,” “to you” or similar in English is translated in the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) as pamaso panu, lit. “on your eyes.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
See also before / in the sight of / presence of (God) (Japanese honorifics).
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 5:3:
The Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “pray” (or “prayer”) in English is often translated as “talking with God” (Central Pame, Tzeltal, Chol, Chimborazo Highland Quichua, Shipibo-Conibo, Kaqchikel, Tepeuxila Cuicatec, Copainalá Zoque, Central Tarahumara).
Other solutions include:
What do begging and praying have to do with each other? Do you beg when you pray? Do I?
“The Ik word for ‘visitor’ is waanam, which means ‘begging person.’ Do you beg when you go visiting? The Ik do. Maybe you don’t beg, but maybe when you visit someone, you are looking for something. Maybe it’s just a listening ear.
When the Ik hear that [my wife] Amber and I are planning trip to this or that place for a certain amount of time, the letters and lists start coming. As the days dwindle before our departure, the little stack of guests grows. ‘Please, sir, remember me for the allowing: shoes, jacket (rainproof), watch, box, trousers, pens, and money for the children. Thank you, sir, for your assistance.’
“A few people come by just to greet us or spend bit of time with us. Another precious few will occasionally confide in us about their problems without asking for anything more than a listening ear. I love that.
“The other day I was in our spare bedroom praying my list of requests to God — a nice list covering most areas of my life, certainly all the points of anxiety. Then it hit me: Does God want my list, or does he want my relationship?
“I decided to try something. Instead of reading off my list of requests to God, I just talk to him about my issues without any expectation of how he should respond. I make it more about our relationship than my list, because if our personhood is like God’s personhood, then maybe God prefers our confidence and time to our lists, letters, and enumerations.”
Source: Kathy Taber in Notes on Translation 1/1999, p. 9-16.
See also Nehemiah’s prayer (image).
Following is a translation of Psalm 5 into song in Kom, by the Kom Psalms That Sing team. You can find the translation into English below the video.
1. Hear my voice Oh Lord
Look closely at these tears in my eyes
2. Hear my cry and help me
You are my God
You are my king
This is my prayer to you
3. At daybreak Lord,
You hear my voice
When I wake up early in the morning,
I prepare a sacrifice to you
And wait to hear from you
4. You are not pleased with evil
You do not like to see an evil person
5. You do not like those who work for you to be proud
You do not like people who do wrong things
6. When a person tells lies you just finish him completely
You do not want to see anyone who loves to kill people
You do not like to see people who deceive people
7. But I can come into your house
Because of your covenant love
And worship you holding you in awe
8. I have many enemies Lord
Direct me to rule again according to your will
Show me your smooth ways
9. When they open their mouths, only lies come out
They are always planning to destroy
Their mouths are like graves that are not covered
Even though their talk is always sweet
10. Judge them Oh God and punish them Cause them to fall in the very traps they have set
They have rebelled for too long
Banish them from this country
11. But cause that all people
Who have escaped to hide under your wings be happy
Cause them to always sing and rejoice
Hide them under your wings
So that those who love you can be proud of you
12. Truly Lord, you bless the righteous
Your love is like a shield to them
℗ 2025 Wycliffe Bible Translators South Africa NPC. Used with permission. Part of the Psalms that Sing project.
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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. When the referent is God, the “divine” honorific prefix mi- (御 or み) can be used, as in mi-mae (御前) or “before (God)” in the referenced verses. In some cases in can also be used in reference to being before a king, such as in 1 Samuel 16:16.
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
See also presence (Japanese honorifics) and before you / to you.
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 choice of a benefactive construction as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. Here, kīte (聞いて) or “listen” is used in combination with kudasaru (くださる), a respectful form of the benefactive kureru (くれる). A benefactive reflects the good will of the giver or the gratitude of a recipient of the favor. To convey this connotation, English translation needs to employ a phrase such as “for me (my sake)” or “for you (your sake).”
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
Hearken translates another Hebrew verb meaning “listen, pay attention.”
In this psalm God is addressed as my King, a common designation for God in prayer (see 84.3). Good News Translation has reversed the order, “my God and my king,” so as to avoid the possibility that the person who hears the text being read may misunderstand that a human being is being addressed, my King, as well as my God. If the translator follows either Revised Standard Version, my King and my God, or Good News Translation, “my God and king,” the phrase may be misunderstood to mean two different persons. In such a case the expression may be recast in the form of a relative clause; for example, “my God, who is my king.”
There is a difference of opinion about the third line of verse 2: some connect it with what precedes (Revised Standard Version, An American Translation, New American Bible, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy); others connect it with what follows (Good News Translation, New English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Bible en français courant). The meaning is not greatly affected by the difference, and a translator should feel free to choose either one. In the Masoretic text division of verses, O LORD is at the beginning of verse 3. For better balance of lines, Good News Translation places the verse number 3 at the beginning of the following line (see New Jerusalem Bible and New American Bible, which do not).
In verse 3 the Hebrew word for morning is used twice; Good News Translation uses the synonyms “morning” and “sunrise” for greater poetic effect.
Languages divide time in very different ways, and it is often necessary to decide if the time referred to is before sunrise, during sunrise, or immediately following sunrise. The essential feature here is early morning daylight and corresponds in time to what is known to Muslims as salat al fajar, which is the first and earliest of the five daily prayers.
The choice between Good News Translation “offer my prayer” and Revised Standard Version prepare a sacrifice (see Good News Translation footnote) depends on the exegesis of the Hebrew verb, which means “to put in order, to arrange” (see Traduction œcuménique de la Bible “I get everything ready for you”). It is disputed whether it refers to prayer (Delitzsch, Briggs, Kirkpatrick, An American Translation, Moffatt, New American Bible, New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible) or to a sacrifice (Weiser, Oesterley, Taylor, Toombs, Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, Zürcher Bibel). New Jerusalem Bible and Biblia Dios Habla Hoy have “I lay my case before you,” and Bible en français courant “I prepare myself to be received by you, and I wait.”
Some languages render “prayer” as “speaking to God.” Since the exegetical opinion is quite divided between “prayer” and “sacrifice,” it is recommended that there be a note for the meaning not employed in the text.
And watch is a literal translation of the Hebrew; in the context of prayer it means “and wait for your answer” (Kirkpatrick); Knox has “await thy pleasure.”
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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