Lost in Translation: What’s Happening Under the Hood of Your Bible?

“Bury me.”

That’s the literal translation of the modern Lebanese expression ta’burni. (That’s one possible way of transliterating the Arabic letters.)

In English, “bury me” is rather morbid-sounding—but for the Lebanese, it’s shorthand. It’s not an instruction, but a wish:

“The thought of living without you is unbearable. I hope, when the time comes, I die before you—I hope you’re the one who has to bury me—because I don’t know how I’d cope with the alternative.”

All that is wrapped up in the Arabic expression. But it’s not wrapped up in the English words bury me.

What’s a translator to do?

Translation is a challenging process

I don’t think there’s a right answer. If you translate it as “bury me,” you’re being faithful to the literal words being used in the original Arabic while introducing confusion over a phrase whose meaning requires cultural context to decipher. If you translate it as “I can’t bear the thought of living without you,” you’re being faithful to the intended meaning of the person who said it while obscuring the actual words he or she used.

Both are right. And yet both are wrong.

Translation can be complicated.

And that’s just an example of the choices involved in translating a single expression from one modern language to another. When we start talking about the Bible—a collection of books written over a period of about 1,500 years using three ancient languages attached to cultures that no longer exist—then the challenges are multiplied.

What this article is and isn’t trying to do

By the time you finish reading this, there’s something I hope to convince you of—and something I’m trying very hard not to convince you of.

When you open up the pages of your English Bible, what you’re reading is a translation of God’s inspired words—not the original words, but an interpretation of their meaning. And because the translation process is often complicated and imperfect, we should be careful how much weight we put on the specific words of a specific translation.

Underneath those English words are a host of grammatical, historical, cultural and linguistic considerations that even some of the most studied experts don’t always agree on. And even when the experts do agree, sometimes a Hebrew or Greek word might carry so many layers of meaning that it’s impossible for a single English word to convey what’s being said.

I want you to be aware of that while you read the Bible, because treating translated words as if they were the original text can occasionally lead us to some wildly inaccurate conclusions.

What I don’t want to convince you to do is to read the Bible with extreme skepticism, doubting everything and trusting nothing. I don’t want to convince you that this holy and sacred book is impossible to comprehend or only for the experts.

Our Bible translations exist because of untold lifetimes of effort poured in by those who carefully preserved the words God inspired—and those who diligently worked to refine their understanding of those ancient words, creating something the rest of us could read in a language we understand.

Even though we could spend lifetimes diving into nuances and cultural details, a translation of the Bible still provides us with what we need to understand who God is, what He’s doing and what He expects from us.

As Paul wrote, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That’s true, even thousands of years removed from the source material.

What exactly is hesed?

Consider, for example, hesed—a Hebrew word filled with so many layers of meaning that it can’t easily be translated. It’s used repeatedly in the Old Testament (251 times!), but if you look at a few different English translations, the enormity of the word becomes unmistakable.

In Hosea 6:6, God says, “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

Well, sort of. The New King James Version translates hesed as “mercy,” but you’ll also find it translated as “steadfast love” (English Standard Version), “loyalty” (New American Standard Bible), “faithfulness” (NET Bible) and “faithful love” (Christian Standard Bible).

What exactly does God desire?

Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary describes hesed as a word that “denotes ‘kindness, love, loyalty, mercy,’ most poignantly employed in the context of relationship between God and humans.” What’s more, Mounce’s says, it often describes “the special relationship God has with his covenantal people, and as such can be a difficult word to translate because it is so specific” (p. 426).

What God desires or delights in is not just when His people show mercy, but when their continued faithfulness to His covenantal relationship results in acts of love, mercy and faithful obedience to His ways.

He desires hesed.

Are these translation issues in your Bible?

That’s the difficulty of treating an English translation as if it were a flawless representation of God’s inspired words. Any time humans try to convey a deeper meaning from one language into another, they’re going to run into hurdles.

For example, if the only copy of the Bible you owned was the King James Version, and you didn’t have access to any other resources, you’d probably wonder about unicorns.

That’s right—the King James Version mentions unicorn or unicorns in nine verses. David, for example, praises God for delivering him “from the horns of the unicorns” (Psalm 22:21, KJV).

Today, we recognize that as a translation issue stemming from scholars who misunderstood a Hebrew word (re’em) as it was translated into Greek (monokeros) and eventually Latin (unicornus). Modern scholarship reveals that re’em wasn’t a reference to a legendary one-horned creature, but most likely a wild ox, the ancestor of domesticated cattle.

Translation issues might also convince you that Jesus was promising to meet the thief on the cross in heaven on the day of His crucifixion. Most translations render Luke 23:43 a similar way: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’”

If you didn’t know that the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament didn’t include punctuation, that verse would look like pretty compelling evidence that both Jesus and the thief were in paradise that same day.

Here’s another legitimate way to translate that passage: “Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

The promise was given that day—but not fulfilled that day. (See more in “What Happened to the Thief on the Cross?”)

Don’t give up, but don’t forget

So what do we do? Throw up our hands in defeat and call the whole thing an impenetrable mystery? Insist everyone receive a thorough schooling in biblical languages before interacting with God’s Word? Remain forever suspicious of everything we read, wondering if a translator’s bias or our own ignorance is obscuring the truth?

No . . . but when we open up a translation of the Bible, we should always keep in mind that we’re reading a translation of the Bible. Things can get lost in translation. Ideas that are crisp in one language get fuzzy in another; the scope of a meaning can be incorrectly broadened or narrowed in the quest for the right word to convey it.

When we read the Bible, we’re reading a careful attempt to convey ancient thoughts across thousands of years of time and space. We should appreciate and admire the tireless work of those involved while also acknowledging that such work is, by nature, imperfect.

If we put too much weight on specific translated words, we risk confusing things God inspired with things men thought. (At the very least, we risk inventing unicorns.)

God’s inspiration transcends translation

And yet, even in spite of all the hurdles of translation, God’s voice remains.

The apostle Paul reminded Timothy that “from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).

The Scriptures that Timothy knew were very likely a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that we call the Septuagint. But that didn’t stop Paul from affirming to Timothy that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (verse 16). The Greek translation Timothy had access to would have been enough to learn what he needed to learn.

Why?

Because the God who inspired these words to be written thousands of years ago—in Hebrew, Greek and a little bit of Aramaic—also inspired them to be preserved and translated for us. He transcends the Bible, and if we are seeking Him, He will help us to understand what we need to understand. While we can’t afford to ignore the limitations of the translation process, we also can’t afford to minimize Christ’s promise that His Spirit “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

In the meantime, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love [hesed], and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

That’s a good place to start.