swear, vow

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “swear (an oath)” or “vow” is translated as “God sees me, I tell the truth to you” (Tzeltal), “loading yourself down” (Huichol), “to speak-stay” (implying permanence of the utterance) (Sayula Popoluca), “to say what he could not take away” (San Blas Kuna), “because of the tight (i.e. “binding”) word which he had said to her face” (Guerrero Amuzgo), “strong promise” (North Alaskan Inupiatun) (source for all above: Bratcher / Nida), “eat an oath” (Nyamwezi — source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext), or sswa nak/”drink an oath” (Jju — source: McKinney 2018, p. 31).

In Bauzi “swear” can be translated in various ways. In Hebrews 6:13, for instance, it is translated with “bones break apart and decisively speak.” (“No bones are literally broken but by saying ‘break bones’ it is like people swear by someone else in this case it is in relation to a rotting corpse’ bones falling apart. If you ‘break bones’ so to speak when you make an utterance, it is a true utterance.”) In other passages, such as in Matthew 26:72, it’s translated with an expression that implies taking ashes (“if a person wants everyone to know that he is telling the truth about a matter, he reaches down into the fireplace, scoops up some ashes and throws them while saying ‘I was not the one who did that.'”). So in Matthew 26:72 the Bauzi text is: “. . . Peter took ashes and defended himself saying, ‘I don’t know that Nazareth person.'” (Source: David Briley)

See also swear (promise) and Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’, or ‘No, No’.

Translation commentary on 1 Samuel 14:28

One of the people: that is, “one of the soldiers” (New Revised Standard Version). Similarly the words charged the people will be better translated “charged the troops” (New Revised Standard Version).

Your father strictly charged the people with an oath, saying: Revised Standard Version inserts the word strictly because the Hebrew construction is emphatic (so also New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible). Fox attempts to express this aspect of the Hebrew by saying “Your father made the people swear, yes, swear, saying.”

Before translating this verse, one must decide whether the words And the people were faint are (1) part of the quotation or (2) whether they are the writer’s comment to the reader. Revised Standard Version follows the second interpretation. Good News Translation and most other versions (including New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, New Revised Standard Version, and Revised English Bible) follow the first interpretation. Good News Translation places these words at the beginning of the quotation and uses the first person plural, “We are all weak from hunger.”

Some consider these words And the people were faint to be a later scribal comment, taken from verse 31b. On this basis New Jerusalem Bible and Anchor Bible omit these words in translation.

Were faint: this unusual verb form means “to be weak” or “to be tired.” Since the context clearly indicates the reason that they are tired, Good News Translation adds the words “from hunger.” See also verse 31.

It will be desirable in some languages to avoid direct speech altogether. If this is the case, the following model may be helpful:

• But one of the soldiers told Jonathan about the oath that Saul had imposed on the troops, and how he had put them under a curse if they ate any food that day.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .