covenant

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The Hebrew, Greek, Ge’ez, and Latin that are translated as “covenant” in English are translated in a variety of ways. Here are some (back-) translations:

  • Mossi: “helping promise”
  • Vai: “a thing-time-bind” (i.e. “an arrangement agreed upon for a period of time”)
  • Loma (Liberia): “agreement”
  • Northwestern Dinka: “agreement which is tied up” (i.e. “secure and binding”)
  • Chol: “a word which is left”
  • Huastec: “a broken-off word” (“based on the concept of ‘breaking off a word’ and leaving it with the person with whom an agreement has been reached”)
  • Tetelcingo Nahuatl: “a death command” (i.e. “a special term for testament”)
  • Piro: “a promised word”
  • Eastern Krahn: “a word between”
  • Yaka: “promise that brings together” (source for this and all above: Bratcher / Nida)
  • Nabak: alakŋaŋ or “tying the knot” (source: Fabian 2013, p. 156)
  • Kâte: ʒâʒâfic or “tie together” (source: Renck 1990, p. 108)
  • Nyamwezi: ilagano: “agreement, contract, covenant, promise” (source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
  • Bariai: “true talk” (source: Bariai Back Translation)
  • Q’anjob’al: “put mouths equal” (representing agreement) (source: Newberry and Kittie Cox in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 91ff. )
  • Manikion, Indonesian: “God’s promise” (source: Daud Soesilo)
  • Natügu: nzesz’tikr drtwr: “oneness of mind” (source: Brenda Boerger in Beerle-Moor / Voinov, p. 164)
  • Tagalog: tipan: mutual promising on the part of two persons agreeing to do something (also has a romantic touch and denotes something secretive) (source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )
  • Tagbanwa: “initiated-agreement” (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Cherokee: “that which is told” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 16)
  • Guhu-Samane: “The concept [in Mark 14:24 and Matthew 16:28] is not easy, but the ritual freeing of a fruit and nut preserve does afford some reference. Thus, ‘As they were drinking he said to them, ‘On behalf of many this poro provision [poro is the traditional religion] of my blood is released.’ (…) God is here seen as the great benefactor and man the grateful recipient.” (Source: Ernest Richert in The Bible Translator, 1965, p. 81ff. )
  • Chichewa: pangano. This word can also be translated as a contract, agreement, or a treaty between two parties. In Chewa culture, two people or groups enter into an agreement to help each other in times of need. When entering into an agreement, parties look at the mutual benefits which will be gained. The agreement terms are mostly kept as a secret between the parties and the witnesses involved. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Law (2013, p. 95) writes about how the Ancient Greek Septuagint‘s translation of the Hebrew berith was used by the New Testament writers as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments (click or tap here to read more):

“Right from the start we witness the influence of the Septuagint on the earliest expressions of the Christian faith. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks of his blood being a kaine diatheke, a ‘new covenant.’ The covenant is elucidated in Hebrews 8:8-12 and other texts, but it was preserved in the words of Jesus with this language in Luke 22:20 when at the Last Supper Jesus said, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Jesus’s blood was to provide the grounds for the ‘new covenant,’ in contrast to the old one his disciples knew from the Jewish scriptures (e.g., Jeremiah 31:31-34). Thus, the earliest Christians accepted the Jewish Scriptures as prophecies about Jesus and in time began to call the collection the ‘Old Testament’ and the writings about Jesus and early Christianity the ‘New Testament,’ since ‘testament’ was another word for ‘covenant.’ The covenant promises of God (berith in Hebrew) were translated in the Septuagint with the word diatheke. In classical Greek diatheke had meant ‘last will, testament,’ but in the Septuagint it is the chosen equivalent for God’s covenant with his people. The author of Hebrews plays on the double meaning, and when Luke records Jesus’ announcement at the Last Supper that his blood was instituting a ‘new covenant,’ or a ‘new testament,’ he is using the language in an explicit contrast with the old covenant, found in the Jewish scriptures. Soon, the writings that would eventually be chosen to make up the texts about the life and teachings of Jesus and the earliest expression of the Christian faith would be called the New Testament. This very distinction between the Old and New Testaments is based on the Septuagint’s language.”

See also establish (covenant) and covenant (book).

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Covenant in the Hebrew Bible .

complete verse (Psalm 89:39)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 89:39:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “You have rejected an agreement with your servant
    and you have stained with dust his kingship hat.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “You have abandoned the covenant You made with Your servant,
    Throwing his crown on the ground, You have defiled it.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “You have-renounced/gotten-rid-of your (sing.) agreement with him your (sing.) servant,
    and you (sing.) took his authority as king.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “You destroyed your covenant and your servant,
    and you threw his crown on mud.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Umeliacha agano lako na mtumishi wako,
    umeitupa katika vumbi taji yake ya ufalme.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “It seems that you have broken the agreement that you made with your servant, David;
    it seems as though you have signaled that he is no longer the king by throwing his crown into the dust/dirt.” (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.

Honorary "rare" construct denoting God ("profaning")

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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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme rare (られ) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, kegashiteo-rare-ru (汚しておられる) or “profaning” is used.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Translation commentary on Psalm 89:38 - 89:39

The third Good News Translation heading may be recast in some languages to say, for example, “The psalmist mourns because the king has been defeated” or “The psalmist laments because the king’s enemies have defeated him.”

In verses 38-45 the psalmist accuses God of having broken his covenant with the king and having caused his defeat and humiliation. In order to make it clear that the psalmist is addressing God, it may be well to say “But you, LORD, are angry….” Kirkpatrick notes that the harshness of the language of these verses scandalized many ancient Jewish commentators; one of them, Aben-Ezra of Toledo, Spain (twelfth century A.D.), reported that there was “a certain wise and pious man in Spain who would never read nor listen to this Psalm.”

Good News Translation has reversed the two lines of verse 38 for a more natural development of thought. For a similar expression of God’s anger, see 78.59, 62. “Your chosen king” translates thy anointed (see 2.2). There is no certain way of identifying the king. He has suffered military defeat, and Jerusalem has fallen to enemy forces and been ransacked (verses 40-41). The king has been deposed and stripped of his royal symbols (verses 39b, 44). It should be noted that some believe that these verses do not express a concrete historical situation but are part of a cultic act in which the king underwent a ritual degradation.

The boldness of verse 39 is extraordinary: God is accused of having gone back on the promise he made to the king: “You have broken your covenant with your servant.” The verb translated renounced occurs only here and in Lamentations 2.7b (“disowned”). In verse 39b Good News Translation “thrown” translates a verb which means “to pollute, defile, desecrate” (see its use in 74.7b, “desecrated”). The crown was the symbol not only of the king’s power but also of the holiness of his office, as the anointed of God. The Hebrew word here translated crown is not the usual one; nezer is related to the verb “to dedicate, consecrate,” and the Septuagint translates the word here “his holiness”; New Jerusalem Bible has “his dignity.” It may be well to follow the example of Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, “You have thrown his diadem to the ground and profaned it,” or Bible en français courant “you have dirtied his crown by throwing it on the ground.” In languages in which defiled his crown in the dust carries little or no meaning, it will be necessary to shift to another symbol and say, for example, “you have taken away his chief’s stool,” or to a nonmetaphorical rendering, “you have taken away his authority as chief” or “… removed the symbol of his authority.” In languages in which the leader’s symbols of authority are in objects very different from crowns, these symbols should be employed.

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 .