Ps 7:6 – Page 2

addressing God

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

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight

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.

Translation commentary on Psalm 7:6

With this verse the psalmist begins a strophe (verses 6-9) in which he calls upon God, the Judge of all humankind, to judge him and declare him innocent of the charges against him.

With three verbs the psalmist calls upon Yahweh to act: Arise … lift thyself up … awake. These are ways of asking him to take action against the psalmist’s enemies and defeat them. The first two are quite close in meaning; see “Arise, O LORD” in 3.7. The third one, awake, does not necessarily imply that Yahweh is asleep, but only that he is inactive; so Good News Translation “rouse yourself,” New Jerusalem Bible “bestir Yourself.”

In line b the noun fury may be parallel to anger in line a, so that the line may mean “Stand up in fury against my enemies”; so An American Translation, New English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible footnote. Although the Hebrew word for fury is not the same as other words already used in Psalms, it is not significantly different. It appears in four other passages, referring always to God’s anger (78.49b; 85.3a; 90.9a, 11b); Revised Standard Version consistently translates “wrath.”

Fury of my enemies must often be recast, since fury will in some cases not function as the object of lift thyself up against, but only as a description of the enemies. In such cases it may be rendered “stand up against my furious enemies,” or figuratively, “protect me from my hot-hearted enemies.” The word for enemies is the same as in 6.7.

In line c Good News Translation “and help me” (Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “and be on my side”) translates the Masoretic text “for me” (as in the Revised Standard Version footnote). But if different vowels are used, the two consonants of the Hebrew word mean “my God”; so Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible (Septuagint has “O Lord my God”).6 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (“B” decision) prefers “unto me,” meaning “in my favor.”

The last words of the verse in Hebrew have no obvious connection with what precedes; literally “you have decreed justice (or, judgment).” Both New English Bible and New Jerusalem Bible (which have “my God”) take it as a description of God, “you who demand that justice shall be done” (see also Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Bible en français courant); New Jerusalem Bible and Bible de Jérusalem are like Revised Standard Version; New American Bible is different, “wake to the judgment you have decreed” (which is none too clear). Moffatt has “Awake to aid us, to maintain the right”; Weiser, “Appoint a judgment.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project says the Hebrew may mean “you have (in fact) ordained judgment,” or “you who have ordained judgment” or “… ordain judgment.”

The word for “justice” (or, judgment) is mishpat (used in 1.5), a word which covers the widest area possible of conformity to rule, custom, command, right; it may be used in the abstract sense of justice, of what is right, fitting, proper, or in the concrete sense of an act of judgment, including the concept of the final Day of Judgment.

Since it is difficult or impossible in many languages to speak of “decreeing judgment,” it is often necessary recast this expression. Taking “justice” in the sense of conforming to rules, it is possible to say “God requires that people live right,” or in the sense of God’s judgment, “God will judge people” or “God has fixed a time to judge everyone.”

Good News Translation has joined the last words of this verse to the next verse; that this is the way the Hebrew text is to be understood is by no means certain.

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 7 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 7 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter and heptameter with rhyme schemes based on -an and -ai (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):

被誣

雅瑋吾天主。賴爾得平安。仇人肆誣衊。無風起波瀾。求主速營救。莫使我被害。彼人兇如獅。吞我心方快。除主復何恃。不救吾其殆。倘吾曾為此。有罪在雙腕。苟以怨報德。未以德報怨。任憑彼凌虐。雖死亦無憾。身敗不足論。名裂固所願。我實未為此。請主奮身起。為我抗眾敵。莫容橫逆熾。願主作裁判。高坐爾王位。眾民亦會集。環立爾周圍。但願睿哲主。鑒察我忠義。按照爾公平。報答我純粹。欲使惡人懼。不敢行無禮。欲使義人喜。沛然自奮勵。我主固全知。洞悉人腑肺。
主是護身盾。永保正直人。天威何顯赫。裁判公且明。磨刀霍霍箭在弦。人不回頭將受刑。兵戈火箭莫不備。誰能不畏主之嗔。惡人如妊婦。臨蓐時在即。所懷惟禍胎。所產乃妖孽。心勞信日拙。自墜陷人窟。悖出亦悖入。自中毒人螫。出爾竟反爾。自傷投人石。報應何昭著。絲毫無爽忒。欲頌公平主。欲揚至尊德。

Transcription into Roman alphabet with rhymes highlighted:

bèi wū

yǎ wěi wú tiān zhǔ 。 lài ěr dé píng ān 。 chóu rén sì wū miè 。 wú fēng qǐ bō lán 。 qiú zhǔ sù yíng jiù 。 mò shǐ wǒ bèi hài 。 bǐ rén xiōng rú shī 。 tūn wǒ xīn fāng kuài 。 chú zhǔ fù hé shì 。 bù jiù wú qí dài 。 tǎng wú zēng wéi cǐ 。 yǒu zuì zài shuāng wàn 。 gǒu yǐ yuàn bào dé 。 wèi yǐ dé bào yuàn 。 rèn píng bǐ língnnüè 。 suī sǐ yì wú hàn 。 shēn bài bù zú lùn 。 míng liè gù suǒ yuàn 。 wǒ shí wèi wéi cǐ 。 qǐng zhǔ fèn shēn qǐ 。 wéi wǒ kàng zhòng dí 。 mò róng héng nì chì 。 yuàn zhǔ zuò cái pàn 。 gāo zuò ěr wáng wèi 。 zhòng mín yì huì jí 。 huán lì ěr zhōu wéi 。 dàn yuàn ruì zhé zhǔ 。 jiàn chá wǒ zhōng yì 。 àn zhào ěr gōng píng 。 bào dá wǒ chún cuì 。 yù shǐ è rén jù 。 bù gǎn xíng wú lǐ 。 yù shǐ yì rén xǐ 。 pèi rán zì fèn lì 。 wǒ zhǔ gù quán zhī 。 dòng xī rén fǔ fèi 。
zhǔ shì hù shēn dùn 。 yǒng bǎo zhèng zhí rén 。 tiān wēi hé xiǎn hè 。 cái pàn gōng qiě míng 。 mó dāo huò huò jiàn zài xián 。 rén bù huí tóu jiāng shòu xíng 。 bīng gē huǒ jiàn mò bù bèi 。 shuí néng bù wèi zhǔ zhī chēn 。 è rén rú rèn fù 。 lín rù shí zài jí 。 suǒ huái wéi huò tāi 。 suǒ chǎn nǎi yāo niè 。 xīn láo xìn rì zhuō 。 zì zhuì xiàn rén kū 。 bèi chū yì bèi rù 。 zì zhōng dú rén shì 。 chū ěr jìng fǎn ěr 。 zì shāng tóu rén shí 。 bào yīng hé zhāo zhù 。 sī háo wú shuǎng tè 。 yù sòng gōng píng zhǔ 。 yù yáng zhì zūn dé 。

With thanks to Simon Wong.

Psalm 7: Layer by Layer

The following are presentations by the Psalms: Layer by Layer project, run by Scriptura . The first is an overview, the second an introduction into the poetry, and the third an introduction into the exegesis of Psalm 7.