The Hebrew and Greek that is translated by some English translations with the euphemism “to know someone” and by others as “be intimate with someone” or “have sexual relations with someone” is translated in Cherokee as “becoming wise” or “becoming experienced.” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 31)
Translation commentary on Tobit 8:11 - 8:13
There is an awkward sequence of events in these verses:
Raguel tells Edna to send a servant girl in.
They (Raguel and Edna) send the servant in.
They light a lamp.
They open the door.
The servant girl goes in.
New Revised Standard Version does not try to solve the problems that are here. Why does Raguel tell Edna to do something and then join her in doing it? Does the servant not take the lamp in with her?
This passage makes better sense in the Old Latin. There Edna sends the servant, and the servant lights the lamp and opens the door. New American Bible follows this, saying “She sent the maid, who lit a lamp, opened the bedroom door, went in….” Essentially this is what Good News Translation does, although it is hard to tell if it does so for translational or textual reasons. The simplest solution is that suggested by the New English Bible. It requires no textual change, only a reordering of events: “They lit a lamp, opened the door, and sent a maidservant in; and she found them sound asleep together.”
One of the maids: See 3.7.
A lamp in those days was probably a small clay receptacle, a dish or bowl, filled with olive oil. It would have a small wick floating in the oil, with one end poking out of a spout on the side.
Sound asleep together is a translation of two Greek words for sleeping. If a careful distinction is made between them, we could translate “lying together asleep.”
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Tobit. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.
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