your hand was heavy upon me

The Hebrew that is translated as “your hand was heavy upon me” or similar in English is translated in Sar as “Your hand hits my head rututu.” Rututu) is an ideophone (a word that expresses what is perceived by the five senses) which “evokes a regular, equal or orderly arrangement of a set of small objects, a more or less equal distribution over time. Examples: the children (lined up or side by side) are the same size, I’m all sweaty, he has a rash of little pimples all over his body (…), he scolds us regularly.” (Source: Ngarbolnan Riminan in Le Sycomore 2000, p. 20ff. )

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 32:4

The psalmist regarded his illness as punishment (line a); literally “your hand was heavy on me,” that is, “you beat me severely” (see the same idiom in 38.2b; 39.10).

The second part of the verse is difficult to understand; the Masoretic text is “was changed my moisture by heats of summer.” The ancient versions differ from the Masoretic text and from each other. The word translated strength (Good News Translation “moisture”) occurs only here and in Numbers 11.8, of “bread (or, cake) baked with olive oil.” Here it is taken to mean “moisture, sap,” in the sense of vitality, strength.

The word translated heat occurs only here in the Old Testament. Following one Hebrew manuscript, which has “as the heat” (instead of the Masoretic text “by the heat”), Good News Translation has taken the language to express a simile and filled it out with “… as moisture is dried up by the summer heat” (similarly Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible).4 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project says the Masoretic text means “my strength was dried up in (or, by) the heat of [summer].” One may assume that Hebrew Old Testament Text Project does not mean to say that the psalmist had suffered a sunstroke; but Hebrew Old Testament Text Project does not explicitly state that the statement is to be taken figuratively, not literally. Bible en français courant has “I was exhausted as a plant by the fierce summer heat” (similarly Biblia Dios Habla Hoy). In some languages it is not natural to speak of one’s strength drying up. Strength is sometimes said to melt, to wither, or fall down. In languages which employ a different description of failing strength, it will often be necessary to adapt the type of simile used; for example, as in Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “as a flower withers from the heat of summer, so I have felt myself fade away.”

Some, instead of the Masoretic text “my moisture,” make the conjecture “my tongue”; Dahood takes the Masoretic text to be the vocative “O Shaddai,” a title for God. These conjectures do not have good support.

For Selah see comments on 3.2.

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 .