land flowing with milk and honey

The phrase that is rendered in English versions as “land flowing with milk and honey” is translated into Afar as niqmatak tan baaxoy buqre kee lacah meqehiyya: “a blessed land good for fields and cattle.” (Source: Loren Bliese)

In the interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) it is translated with the existing proverb dziko lamwanaalirenji or “a land of what (type of food) can the child cry for?” (i.e. there is more than enough to eat). (Source: Ernst Wendland in The Bible Translator 1981, p. 107)

In Kwere it is “good/fertile land.” (Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

Translation commentary on Exod 3:17

I promise is literally “I say,” but understood in context it may mean “I have decided” (Good News Translation). New English Bible has “I am resolved.” I will bring you up is the same word used in 3.8, suggesting movement either from a lower to a higher level or from south to north. (See the comment there.)

The affliction of Egypt refers to the affliction of the Israelites in Egypt. It is better expressed as “your misery in Egypt” (New English Bible). Good News Translation‘s adjustment to indirect speech becomes “out of Egypt, where they are being treated cruelly.” In some languages it will be more natural to say “from the place where the Egyptians are treating them cruelly.” To the land of the Canaanites, … repeats the list of the six ethnic groups mentioned in 3.8. (See the suggested translation of these names in that verse.) A land flowing with milk and honey means “a rich and fertile land.” (Compare 3.8 and the comment.)

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .