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.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on Psalm 86:1 - 86:2

The structure of the first four verses is that of requests supported by reasons. In all there are six requests and five reasons, unless poor and needy in verse 1 can be taken as two. In this kind of structure it is possible, but not always necessary or desirable, to list the request as a series and then to follow with the reasons. The only utterance which is neither request nor reason is Thou art my God, which occurs more or less at the mid point. Such restructuring will not disturb the parallelism, since no semantic parallelism is involved.

The psalmist cries for help (verse 1); for Incline thy ear see 17.6 and comments. Poor and needy translates two words often used in this kind of prayer (see “afflicted” in 9.12; “weak and needy” in 35.10). The expression answer me does not mean that the psalmist seeks a reply to a question, but rather is a plea that God respond to his prayer. In many languages this may be expressed as “help me” or “save me.”

In verse 2 “Preserve my nefesh” (see 3.2) means “don’t let me die.” For godly, that is, pious, devoted, faithful, see 4.3 and comments. New English Bible has “constant and true”; Bible en français courant “one of your faithful ones”; Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “I am faithful to you.”

The second half of verse 2 in Hebrew is “save your servant, you are my God, who is loyal to you.” In some languages it will be necessary to relate thy servant in verses 2 and 4 to the psalmist; otherwise it is possible to understand that the psalmist is making the pleas for himself and someone else. Good News Translation does this in verse 2 and, having established the identity of the writer and “your servant,” does not need to do it again in verse 4. It may be necessary in some languages to say again in verse 4 “make me, your servant, glad” or “make me, who serves you, glad.”

Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation transpose “you are my God” to the end of the verse, joining it to what follows. For aesthetic reasons Good News Translation has kept verse number 3 at the beginning of the line; Revised Standard Version places it in the middle, at the exact beginning of the verse.

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 .