Reading the Bible in Translation

Above: Elihu just can't hold it in anymore.

Quick: which of these Job 32:18 translations is not like the others?

1. For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me.
2. For I am full of words, and the spirit within me compels me.
3. For I am full of pent-up words, and the spirit within me urges me on.
4. For I am full of words, the wind in my belly constrains me.
5. For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.

If you answered #5 because it's clearly less contemporary than the others, you're right, but that's not what I was going for! The correct answer is #4. Take another look. 

The key thing that #4 has and the others are lacking is the word "wind." All the others translate the same term as "spirit."* Both are valid translations of the Hebrew word רוח (ruach), but the translation in #4 has a leg up on the others, and I'll tell you why: it's the best translation for helping the reader understand what this verse really is—a joke!

(Background info on Job if you need it: the book of Job is a theological debate, framed before and after by a folk story about the characters doing the debating. The main character is Job, a fundamentally good man who loses all he has, including his health. His friends come to visit and, in a series of poetic speeches, tell him that he is suffering because he sinned. Job, also in poetic speeches, insists he is guiltless and demands that God explain why he, Job, has been punished when he's done nothing wrong. Surprisingly, God shows up in the end and tells Job that he has no right to ask the master and creator of the universe such questions, and then God gives Job all his stuff back. It would be a way less satisfying ending if the speeches God gives weren't such dang fine poetry!)

Job chapters 32 through 38 are the last speeches by any of Job's friends. Up to this point, the author has stacked the deck subtly in Job's favor by giving Job all the best, most creative, insightful, and beautiful poetry, while his friends are mostly stuck with rather bland platitudes and hoary cliches. The speeches in 32-38 come from the young man Elihu, and they're probably the worst of the bunch.

Verse 18 of chapter 32 is a joke at Elihu's expense by the author of the story. Elihu is trying to say that he's gotten so tired of waiting to speak that he's filled to the breaking point with things to say, but he accidentally calls himself a windbag in the process! (Check out also the next verse, which has another comparison to a bag full to bursting. Note that this joke may also be about farting.) In having Elihu say this thing that ironically discredits him as a know-nothing blowhard, the author clues us in to the fact that we're not really supposed to take Elihu's ideas very seriously. And translation #4 is the only one among these that lets the English-speaking reader in on the joke!

Translation #4 is by a literary scholar and Bible translator named Robert Alter. For the last two decades, Alter has been working on a translation of the Hebrew Bible that's really, really worth checking out if you don't already know about it.

The translation (with commentary) so far: Pentateuch, Psalms, Wisdom Books, and Deuteronomistic History

In introducing his translation, Alter points out that we live in an age of many, many Bible translations, founded by and large on detailed scholarship and very advanced understanding of Hebrew based on current archaeology and other fields of study. When asked, "why add another?" he claims that, "[b]roadly speaking, one may say that in the case of the modern versions, the problem is a shaky sense of English and in the case of the King James Version, a shaky sense of Hebrew" (The Five Books of Moses, pg. xvi).

Alter accuses his fellow Bible translators of falling into what he calls the "heresy of explanation."** Bible translators, he claims, seem to feel afraid to translate much of the idiomatic, metaphorical language of the Hebrew into its most literal English equivalents, perhaps out of fear that readers will get confused. Instead, they tend to create translations that explain what the metaphors probably mean. Trouble is, many of the Hebrew Bible's important literary qualities—allusion, motifs, and as we've already seen, humor and irony—are bound quite tightly to these idioms and metaphors. Heck, Alter explains it better than I do—here's one of his examples:

The Hebrew noun [זרע] zera‘ has the general meaning of “seed,” which can be applied either in the agricultural sense or to human beings, as the term for semen. By metaphorical extension, semen becomes the established designation for what it produces, progeny. Modern translators, evidently unwilling to trust the ability of adult readers to understand that “seed”—as regularly in the King James Version—may mean progeny, repeatedly render it as offspring, descendants, heirs, progeny, posterity. But I think there is convincing evidence in the texts themselves that the biblical writers never entirely forgot that their term for offspring also meant semen and had a precise equivalent in the vegetable world. To cite a distinctly physical example, when Onan “knew that the seed would not be his,” that is, the progeny of his brother’s widow should he impregnate her, “he would waste his seed on the ground, so to give no seed to his brother” (Genesis 38:9). Modern translators, despite their discomfort with body terms, can scarcely avoid the wasted “seed” here because without it the representation of spilling semen on the ground in coitus interrupts becomes unintelligible. E. A. Speiser substitutes “offspring” for “seed” at the end of the verse, however, and the Revised English Bible goes him one better by putting “offspring” at the beginning as well (“Onan knew that the offspring would not count as his”) and introducing “seed” in the middle as object of the verb “to spill” and scuttling back to the decorousness of “offspring” at the end—a prime instance of explanation under the guise of translation. But the biblical writer is referring to “seed” as much at the end of the verse as at the beginning. Onan adopts the stratagem of coitus interruptus in order not to “give seed”—that is, semen—to Tamar, and, as a necessary consequence of this contraceptive act, he avoids providing her with offspring. The thematic point of this moment, anchored in sexual practice, law, and human interaction, is blunted by not preserving “seed” throughout.

Even in contexts not directly related to sexuality the concreteness of this term often amplifies the meaning of the utterance. When, for example, at the end of the story of the binding of Isaac, God reiterates His promise to Abraham, the multiplication of seed is strongly linked with cosmic imagery—harking back to the Creation story—of heaven and earth: “I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea” (Genesis 22:17). If “seed” here is rendered as “offspring” or “descendants,” what we get are two essentially mathematical similes of numerical increase. That is, in fact, the primary burden of the language God addresses to Abraham, but as figurative language it also imposes itself visually on the retina of the imagination, and so underlying the idea of a single late-born son whose progeny will be countless millions is an image of human seed (perhaps reinforced by the shared white color of semen and stars) scattered across the vast expanses of the starry skies and through the innumerable particles of sand on the shore of the sea. To substitute “offspring” for “seed” here may not fundamentally alter the meaning but it diminishes the vividness of the statement, making it just a little harder for readers to sense why these ancient texts have been so compelling down through the ages. (The Five Books of Moses, pgs. xx-xxi, emphasis added)

If you skipped all that quoted text, know this: Alter's main point is that current translations of the Bible are ugly and clunky. I think he's pretty much right, but I actually want to take the argument a step further, and suggest that English translations of the Bible are, by themselves, completely inadequate when it comes to the needs of Christian interpreters.†

Think about it: if our usual translations of the Bible are missing something as cool, interesting, yet simple as a joke about Elihu being a windbag (golly, even his name sounds kind of like someone talking about nothing), how much other more important stuff isn't coming through in translation? How much important stuff is just impossible to effectively translate into English?

Christians read the Bible, by itself, in translation all the time, and while that's fine on occasion, it's not a really effective way to discover the meanings in the text, and it can lead to misinterpretation and simple misunderstanding far too easily. I wrote about this in a little more detail last week, but reading the Bible without someone or something to inform you about the historical and literary context seems foolish to me, and frankly, expecting to be able to interpret it without help amounts to magical thinking.

Put it another way: if we read the Bible in translation with no outside help, and expect to understand it, we are like the man in that old story: he's up on his roof, trying to get away from the rising water during a flood. He prays to God, "Save me!" Another man in a boat passes by and invites him in, but the man on the roof says, "No thanks, God will save me!" The man on the roof drowns; in heaven he confronts God, "Why didn't you save me?" God says, "I sent the boat, what more did you want?" If we read the Bible without all the help God has sent us—in the form of commentators, knowledgeable pastors, Biblical archaeology, and so forth—are we not the same as the drowned man who refused the help that he prayed for?

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*The other translations are: 1. NRSV, 2. NIV, 3. NLT, and 5. KJV. Note that The Message has an interesting, if slightly bonkers, take on this material that includes neither "wind" nor "spirit" but that does include "volcano," if that's what you're into.
**"Heresy" is of course a loaded term in Christian circles. Given that the technical definition of heresy, at least in Western Christianity, is "contradicting something declared in one of the ecumenical councils of the early church," I don't think this can be considered actual Christian heresy. Someone with extensive knowledge of the ecumenical councils: feel free to correct me!
†Which is not to say that you shouldn't buy Alter's translations. In fact, in no way did I mean to imply that; I'm clearly a huge fan of dude's work, and if you're interested in dipping a toe in to see how you like it, I recommend starting with his translation of Genesis, or better yet, 1 & 2 Samuel.

Photo sources:
1. http://www.gci.org/files/images/b6/index
2. Me! Them is my books. The second from the bottom was my birthday present from my parents this year. Thanks, guys!