אֲשֶׁ֨ר קֹנֵיהֶ֤ן יַֽהֲרְגֻן֙ וְלֹ֣א יֶאְשָׁ֔מוּ וּמֹכְרֵיהֶ֣ן יֹאמַ֔ר בָּר֥וּךְ יְהוָ֖ה וַאעְשִׁ֑ר וְרֹ֣עֵיהֶ֔ם לֹ֥א יַחְמ֖וֹל עֲלֵיהֶֽן׃
5Those who buy them kill them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich,’ and their own shepherds have no pity on them.
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “sell” in English is translated in Noongar as wort-bangal or “away-barter.” Note that “buy” is translated as bangal-barranga or “get-barter.” (Source: Bardip Ruth-Ang 2020)
See also buy and buying / selling.
The Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Ge’ez, and Aramaic that is translated into English as “(to) bless” or “blessed” is translated into a wide variety of possibilities.
The Hebrew term barak (and the Aramaic term berak) also (and originally) means “kneel” (a meaning which the word has retained — see Gen. 24:11) and can be used for God blessing people (or things), people blessing each other, or people blessing God. While English Bible translators have not seen a stumbling block in always using the same term (“bless” in its various forms), other languages need to make distinctions (see below).
In Bari, spoken in South Sudan, the connection between blessing and knees/legs is still apparent. For Genesis 30:30 (in English: “the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned”), Bari uses a common expression that says (much like the Hebrew), ‘… blessed you to my feet.'” (Source: P. Guillebaud in The Bible Translator 1965, p. 189ff. .)
In Tagbanwa a phrase is used for both the blessing done by people and God that back-translates to “caused to be pierced by words causing grace/favor” (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation) and in Benabena a term denoted “good spell” or “good magic” (source: Renck 1990, p. 112).
Ixcatlán Mazatec had to select a separate term when relating “to people ‘blessing’ God” (or things of God): “praise(d)” or “give thanks for” (in 1 Cor. 10:16) (“as it is humans doing the ‘blessing’ and people do not bless the things of God or God himself the way God blesses people” — source: Robert Bascom). Eastern Bru and Kui also use “praise” for this a God-directed blessing (source: Bru back translation and Helen Evans in The Bible Translator 1954, p. 40ff. ) and Uma uses “appropriate/worthy to be worshipped” (source: Uma back translation).
When related to someone who is blessing someone else, it is translated into Tsou as “speak good hopes for.” In Waiwai it is translated as “may God be good and kind to you now.” (Sources: Peng Kuo-Wei for Tsou and Robert Hawkins in The Bible Translator 1962, pp. 164ff. for Waiwai.)
Some languages associate an expression that originally means “spitting” or “saliva” with blessing. The Bantu language Koonzime, for instance, uses that expression for “blessing” in their translation coming from either God or man. Traditionally, the term was used in an application of blessing by an aged superior upon a younger inferior, often in relation to a desire for fertility, or in a ritualistic, but not actually performed spitting past the back of the hand. The spitting of saliva has the effect of giving that person “tenderness of face,” which can be translated as “blessedness.” (Source: Keith Beavon)
Martin Ehrensvärd, one of the translators for the Danish Bibelen 2020, comments on the translation of this term: “As for ‘blessing’, in the end we in most instances actually kept the word, after initially preferring the expression ‘giving life strength’. The backlash against dropping the word blessing was too hard. But we would often add a few words to help the reader understand what the word means in a given context — people often understand it to refer more to a spiritual connection with God, but in the Hebrew texts, it usually has to do with material things or good health or many children. So when e.g. in Isaiah 19:25 the Hebrew text says ‘God bless them’, we say ‘God bless them’ and we add: ‘and give them strength’. ‘And give them strength’ is not found in the overt Hebrew text, but we are again making explicit what we believe is the meaning so as to avoid misunderstanding.” (Source: Ehrensvärd in HIPHIL Novum 8/2023, p. 81ff. )
See also bless (food and drink), blessed (Christ in Mark 11:9), and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.
See also “Blessed by ‘The Blessing’ in the World’s Indigenous Languages” and Multilingual version of “The Blessing” based on Numbers 6:24-26 .
The Greek, Latin, Ge’ez, and Hebrew that is translated as “shepherd” in English is translated in Kouya as Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ — ” tender of sheep.”
Philip Saunders (p. 231) explains:
“Then one day they tackled the thorny problem of ‘shepherd’. It was problematic because Kouyas don’t have herdsmen who stay with the sheep all the time. Sheep wander freely round the village and its outskirts, and often a young lad will be detailed to drive sheep to another feeding spot. So the usual Kouya expression meant a ‘driver of sheep’, which would miss the idea of a ‘nurturing’ shepherd. ‘A sheep nurturer’ was possible to say, but it was unnatural in most contexts. The group came up with Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ which meant ‘a tender of sheep’, that is one who keeps an eye on the sheep to make sure they are all right. All, including the translators, agreed that this was a most satisfactory solution.”
Other translations include:
See also I am the good shepherd, complete verse (Psalm 23:1), and sheep / lamb.
Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Shepherds in the Bible .
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Zechariah 11:5:
Those who buy them slay them; that is to say, the merchants who buy the sheep kill them for their meat. It is not clear who these buyers represent symbolically.
And go unpunished: This phrase in English is used in many modern versions (Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, Good News Translation, New International Version, Contemporary English Version). It conveys the hint that those who kill the sheep ought to be punished. This idea is expressed also in the phrase “with impunity” (New American Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). However, it is not so clear that the Hebrew has the same overtones. Among ancient versions the Septuagint and the Vulgate both seem to understand the words to mean “and they suffered no remorse.” Some versions are more neutral in their wording: “and incur no guilt” (New English Bible/ Revised English Bible). Compare the Revised Standard Version translation of the same verb in Jer 50.7, where it has “We are not guilty.” On the whole it seems better not to suggest that those who killed the sheep ought to have been punished. Translators may say “without remorse,” “without compunction,” or “without feeling any regret.”
Those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the LORD, I have become rich’: Those who sell them are other merchants, but again it is not clear who they represent symbolically. Good News Translation treats the buyers and the sellers as a single group, “Their owners,” but this is an oversimplification that is not helpful. Blessed be the LORD is a formula for thanking the LORD, and may be rendered “Thanks to the LORD,” “I give thanks to the LORD,” or even “Praise the LORD.”
I have become rich refers to the profit made in selling the sheep.
And their own shepherds have no pity on them: With a further example of the carelessness frequent in the book of Zechariah, the prophet does not make entirely clear who their refers to. In Hebrew a flock of sheep is regarded as feminine because most of the animals in it are ewes (females). Thus the pronoun suffixes translated them four times in this verse are feminine in Hebrew. However, the Hebrew suffix translated their is masculine. By the strict application of the rules of pronoun reference, the masculine suffix must refer back to the people who buy and sell the sheep, and it is taken this way by Delcor. However, since the sense of the passage seems to require that it should be the sheep who have shepherds, most scholars assume that there is a textual error, and read the suffix as feminine. There is only one letter different between the masculine and feminine suffixes (-hem as against -hen), and a few Hebrew manuscripts actually have a feminine at this point. But in fact the Hebrew text as it stands with the masculine suffix can make perfectly good sense. In the light of verses 7 and 12, it is clear that the shepherds are hired by those who buy and sell the sheep (the “traffickers” in Revised Standard Version at verse 11). Translators are therefore recommended to translate as follows: “the shepherds they hire have no pity on the sheep” or “the people they hire to look after the sheep have no pity [on the sheep].”
There is no mention of shepherds other than the prophet himself up to this point, but the text seems to assume that the flock had other shepherds before the prophet was appointed. Verse 8 may be taken to indicate that he was one of several shepherds. These other shepherds did not develop affection for the animals that people who look after animals often show, but had no pity on them; that is to say, they did not care that the animals would be slaughtered. Presumably the prophet himself is not included among those who have no pity. It is possible, as the Revised Version margin indicates, to take the Hebrew as “their shepherd” (singular), and indeed the verb translated have … pity is singular. But this would make an already difficult verse even more complex, and it is noteworthy that the ancient versions have both the noun and the verb in the plural.
A possible alternative model for this verse is:
• Those people who buy the sheep kill them and feel no regret. As for those who sell them, each one says, “I give thanks to the LORD that I have become rich.” Even the people the buyers and sellers [or, dealers] hire to look after the sheep have no pity on them.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Zechariah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2002. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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