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 Jeremiah 5:7

Pardon (Good News Translation “forgive”) translates the same verb used in 5.1. Although the Hebrew has “forgive you,” it may be necessary to translate “forgive the sins which you have committed.” There is also the problem of the relationship between you (a feminine singular form) and Your children. Since the city of Jerusalem is being addressed throughout the passage, it is natural to assume that you refers to the people of Jerusalem. Thus you and Your children are one and the same, as Good News Translation (“my people … They”) and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (“you … You”) clearly indicate. Others have “you” and “your people.”

The question How can I pardon you? might better be “On what basis can I forgive you?” or “For what reason should I forgive you?” It could also be made into a statement, as in “There is no way I can pardon you” or “It is impossible for me to pardon you.”

Forsaken (Good News Translation “abandoned”) is first used in 1.16. See there for comments.

Sworn by: See 4.2; 5.2. Here translators could have “You [or, Your people] have used the names of those that aren’t real gods to make declarations.” But this may have the effect of putting the emphasis on the swearing, whereas what the verse is intending to say is that the people have been acknowledging as God (as when they swore) what are really false gods. Some translators have “called on the name of.” Good News Translation takes sworn to mean “worshiped.” In Hebrew this verb is similar in sound to the one translated fed … to the full, though none of the commentators suggests that a play on words may be intended.

For those who are no gods (Good News Translation “gods that are not real”), see 2.11. In this verse translators can say something like “You have made oaths in the name of things that aren’t gods” or “You call on things when you make oaths as if they were God, [but they aren’t].”

Fed … to the full translates a verb that means to give a person more than is sufficient to satisfy. This is the only place in Jeremiah where this verb is used in a causative sense; it is used with the meaning “be satisfied” in 31.14; 44.17; 46.10; 50.10, 19. Good News Translation translates “I fed my people until they were full.”

Committed adultery: See 3.8. Here again the reference is to the immorality connected with the worship of the Canaanite fertility gods.

Trooped to (New International Version “thronged to”) is also the meaning followed by Luther 1984, New American Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, and New Jerusalem Bible (“hurried to”). But elsewhere this verb is used only in the sense of “gash” or “cut” (Deut 14.1; 1Kgs 18.28; Jer 16.6; 41.5; 47.5; Micah 5.1), and some scholars doubt that it may have any other meaning. One commentator has pointed out that gashing or slashing was sometimes done in religious fervor to express humiliation and abasement. If the last three lines are seen together, then the flow of ideas is that God fed his people, but they were unfaithful, and in a brothel committed pagan acts. Translators could have “and in brothels they committed pagan acts of cutting themselves,” or put the information that the cutting of themselves was a pagan act in the footnotes. Those who reject this meaning prefer to follow the Hebrew manuscript that reads “stay” or “spend one’s time” (see Moffatt, Revised English Bible, Good News Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). This is also the recommendation of Hebrew Old Testament Text Project.

Houses of harlots are brothels or houses of prostitution.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Jeremiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2003. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .