sorrow

The Greek, Latin and Hebrew that is translated in English as “painful” or “sorrow” is translated in Huba as “cut the insides.” David Frank explains: “Huba has just one expression that covers both ‘angry’ and ‘sad.’ They don’t make a distinction in their language. I suppose you could say that the term they use means more generically, ‘strong emotional reaction’ (source: David Frank in this blog post ). Similarly, in Bariai it is “the interior is severed/cut” (source: Bariai Back Translation).

In Noongar it is translated as koort-warra or “heart bad.” (Source: Bardip Ruth-Ang 2020)

In Enlhet it is translated as “going aside of the innermost.” “Innermost” or valhoc is a term that is frequently used in Enlhet to describe a large variety of emotions or states of mind (for other examples see here). (Source: Jacob Loewen in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 24ff. )

See also grieving / sorrowful.

Translation commentary on Sirach 26:6

There is grief of heart and sorrow when a wife is envious of a rival is literally “Grief of heart and sorrow [is] a woman jealous of a woman” or “A woman jealous of a woman [means] grief of heart and sorrow.” The grammar here does not make it clear that this is the fourth item mentioned in verse 5, but it is the only way of finding a fourth item, and makes especially good sense if we assume that the Greek word for “face” in verse 5 actually means “a person.” We shall assume this to be the case. A further question is whether we are talking about jealousy of one wife for another in a plural marriage, or simply jealous competition between two women. We take it in the latter sense; see the comments on 25.8. Revised Standard Version translates the second clause in this line as a when clause, leading into the next line. We will take another approach there, and therefore treat this line as the fourth item in ben Sira’s list. Following on the translation of verse 5 suggested above, we would suggest the following models for this line:

• That is a woman jealous of another woman—nothing but grief and heartache can come of it.

• … she will cause nothing but heartache and sorrow to others.

And a tongue-lashing makes it known to all: This is a difficult line, mainly because of the Greek verb here, which means something like “have/be in common.” Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation (and most others) take tongue-lashing as a third item in the series beginning with grief and sorrow, since they understand the whole verse to literally say “A woman jealous of another woman [means] grief of heart, and sorrow, and the lash of a tongue falling equally on everyone.” We have a very different understanding of it. Rather than this line being a comment on the jealous woman, it is a comment on all four of the things mentioned in verses 5-6, so this line is literally “and the lash of the tongue is common to all [four].” A model that follows this understanding of the line is “(All four of these [things] involve the trouble that vicious talk can cause.)” This explanation of verse 6b is essentially that of Luís Alonso Schökel, who thinks it was probably added by a later scribe. However, there seems to be no reason why it could not be from the author as a parenthetical comment (so the use of the parentheses in the model).

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.