female second person singular pronoun in Psalms

In Garifuna the second person singular pronoun (“you” in English) has two forms. One is used in women’s speech and one in men’s speech. In the Garifuna Bible the form used in men’s speech is typically used, except when it’s clear that a woman is quoted or in Psalms where the women on the translation team insisted that the form used in women’s speech (buguya) would be used throughout the whole book.

Ronald Ross (in Omanson 2001, p. 375f.) tells the story: “Throughout most of the translation, [the distinctions between the different forms of the pronouns] presented no problem. Whenever the speaker in the text was perceived as a man, the male speech forms were used; and when a woman was speaking, the female speech forms were used. True, the women members of the translation team did object on occasion to the use of the male forms when the author (and narrator) of a book was unknown and the men translators had used the male speech forms as the default. Serious discord arose, however, during the translation of the Psalms because of their highly devotional nature and because throughout the book the psalmist is addressing God. The male translators had, predictably, used the male form to address God, and the male form to refer to the psalmist, even though women speakers of Garifuna never use those forms to address anyone. The women contended that they could not as women read the Psalms meaningfully if God and the psalmist were always addressed as if the readers were men. The men, of course, turned the argument around, claiming that neither could they read the Psalms comfortably if the reader was assumed to be a woman.

“Initially there seemed to be no way out of this impasse. However a solution was found in the ongoing evolution of the language. There is a strong propensity for male speech and female speech to merge in favor of the latter, so the few remaining male forms are gradually dying out. Moreover, male children learn female speech from their mothers and only shift to the male speech forms when they reach adolescence to avoid sounding effeminate. However they use the female form buguya when addressing their parents throughout life. So the women wielded two arguments: First, the general development of the language favored the increasing use of the female forms. Secondly, the female forms are less strange to the men than the male forms are to the women, because the men habitually use them during early childhood and continue to use them to address their parents even in adulthood. Therefore, the female pronominal forms prevailed and were adopted throughout the book of Psalms, though the male forms remained the default forms in the rest of the translation.”

See also female first person singular pronoun in Psalms and addressing God.

addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed. The first example is from a language where God is always addressed distinctly formal whereas the second is one where the opposite choice was made.

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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff.), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking (source Philip Noss).

In Dutch and Western Frisian translations, however, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on Psalm 22:19 - 22:21

In these verses the psalmist once more pleads desperately with the LORD to save him from his enemies, whom he calls dog, lion, and wild oxen.

Verse 19a is practically the same as verse 11a. In verse 19b Revised Standard Version my help translates a word meaning “strength, power,” found nowhere else in the Old Testament. Good News Translation has failed to represent this phrase, which can be translated “My helper, come quickly to my rescue!” or “My helper, come quickly and rescue me!”

In verse 20a Deliver my soul (Good News Translation “Save me”) translates “save my nefesh” (see 3.2). The parallel in line b is the adjective used as a noun, “my only one,” which in parallel with “my nefesh” always refers to something like “the only life I will ever have”; so Revised Standard Version my life, as in 35.17. There is no need to imitate Revised Standard Version and provide the literal Hebrew phrase in a footnote. Some may have “the life that is precious to me.” New American Bible translates “my loneliness,” which it explains as “his desolate soul,” but this is not a good model to follow.

From the sword in verse 20a means “from violent death”; and verse 20b is literally “from the hand of the dog,” where “hand” means power. Dahood and New English Bible take the Masoretic text to mean “from (the blade of) the ax,” but this interpretation is not certain. Good News Translation has “these dogs,” and in verse 21 “these lions” and “these wild bulls,” to indicate that these are metaphors for cruel enemies, not animals.

Deliver my soul from the sword presents a particularly difficult set of problems for a translator. In many languages it is not possible to be saved from an inanimate object such as a sword. In these cases it may be possible to say, for example, “Don’t let my enemies kill me with their swords” or “Protect me from the swords of my enemies.” If the term sword is not familiar, it is better to say, for example, “Don’t let my enemies kill me.”

In verse 21 there is a parallel between the mouth of the lion and the horns of the wild oxen, both of them metaphors for the psalmist’s enemies.

In line b of verse 21 the Masoretic text is “and from the horns of the wild oxen you answered me.” Instead of the Masoretic text “you answered me,” the Septuagint, Syriac, and Jerome have translated as though the Hebrew text were “my oppressed (self),” without a verb in this line; so Good News Translation, Revised Standard Version, An American Translation, New American Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible; New English Bible has “my poor body.” But some stay with the Masoretic text, in the sense of “you defended me”–so Kirkpatrick.19-21 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project stays with the verb “to answer” (“B” decision) and says it can be translated “you will answer me” (an expression of confidence), or “answer me” (a prayer), or “you have answered me” (an expression of gratitude). Traduction œcuménique de la Bible separates it from the preceding words and makes it independent, as the beginning of the next section: “You have answered me!” Weiser and New Jerusalem Bible translate it as though it were an imperative, “Answer (or, Rescue) me!” Dahood has another way of handling the Masoretic text: “make me triumph.” It seems better to follow the Versions, as Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation have done, and it is preferable to join line b with line a as Revised Standard Version has done, as part of the psalmist’s plea, with the verb of line a carrying over into line b. In line with the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project recommendation, however, a translator may choose to follow the Masoretic text, taking the verb “to answer” in the sense of “to defend” or “to rescue,” as follows: “You have rescued (or, protected) me from the horns of the wild oxen.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .