As mentioned in Bible 101: What is the Bible?, translators can take liberties with the underlying language in order to make it accommodating for English speakers. Sometimes this is necessary, as translating literally could make the resultant text unintelligible for no discernable gain.

For example:

• Hebrew is written right-to-left, so English translations necessarily switch it to left-to-right.
• One Hebrew/Greek preposition or conjunction might contain the meaning of multiple English prepositions/conjunctions or vice versa. Translators do their best to convey the original intended meaning.
• Possession (e.g., “his suitcase”) might be part of the noun (“suitcase”), in which case, the original word must be broken out into multiple words.
• Word order might differ (for example, an adjective might come after a noun, e.g., “the tree big” instead of “the big tree”), in which case, translators would change the word order to match how we speak.
• Hebrew and Greek have genders for their nouns (e.g., the word for “tree” might be masculine or feminine in Hebrew or masculine/feminine/neuter in Greek). There’s no good way to adapt this in modern English, so it’s generally just left out.

Unfortunately, translators often go beyond necessary adaptations of these kinds and strip out the literal meaning of the language in order to express Bible statements in English ways of thinking. The problem is, English ways of thinking don’t always match how Bible authors thought, and so when Bible translation turns into Bible interpretation, the opportunity to hear what the Bible authors were saying and how they intended us to understand their words is lost.

I firmly believe Bible translators should limit this kind of interpretative exercise as much as possible. After all, who’s to say the Bible couldn’t change the way we think if we could hear it as it was written? Perhaps that would help us “renew our minds” (Romans 12:2) and thereby be more effectively sanctified.

Let’s look at a few examples of translation turning into interpretation in my personal favorite translation, the New King James Version.

Example 1: Boiling Innards

In Lamentations 1:20, the lamenting Zion says, “See, O LORD, that I am in distress; My soul is troubled; My heart is overturned within me, for I have been very rebellious. Outside the sword bereaves, at home it is like death.”

The Hebrew word used for “soul” in this verse is mēʿê. This word is sometimes translated as “womb” when used in reference to childbirth (such as in Genesis 25:23), sometimes as “intestines” when used in seeming reference to bowels (such as in 2 Chronicles 21:15), sometimes as other words depending on context. However, the most obvious literal meaning of the word is “innards,” meaning the inward parts of the torso. As the bowels and womb are both in the torso, the word could be translated as “innards” in both of those previous verses without any compromise of meaning, and indeed this seems to be God’s intent (He’s deliberately not specifying the particular part of the innards in these instances).

Furthermore, the Hebrew word for “is troubled” in Lamentations 1:20 literally means “is/are being boiled.” Put these together, and instead of “my soul is troubled,” the literal translation is “my innards are being boiled.” Thus, what Jeremiah is voicing for Jerusalem here is the feeling of one’s insides being boiled, which is exactly what someone would feel in a state of deep distress and terror. It is a description of a physical sensation brought on by extreme emotional stress, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the abstract notion of a soul.

Of course, there is a figurative element at play here (the speaker’s insides aren’t literally being boiled), but nonetheless, we need to know the literal translation to understand what Jeremiah is attempting to communicate.

Example 2: Bitterness of Breath

In the Old Testament, the word rûaḥ literally means “wind” but is often used as an idiom for “breath” (as discussed in Trinitarianism, the Holy Spirit is the “rûaḥ” or “Breath” of God).

Now, let’s look at Genesis 26:34-35: “When Esau was forty years old, he took as wives Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. And they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.”

The word “mind” is rûaḥ, so this is sometimes translated “bitterness of spirit” (since the New Testament equates God’s Breath with His Spirit). The word for “grief” indeed means “bitterness,” but we must be careful not to abstract the sense of bitterness too much.

The language here is indeed figurative, but what is being used to convey a figurative concept is a literal expression, which is “bitterness of breath.” In Genesis 27:46, Rebekah tells Isaac that she “loathes her life” because of Esau’s wives. Hence, Rebekah and Isaac must have been miserable all the time. And what better way to express that than to say that their very breath tasted bitter? Wouldn’t your own breath tasting bitter, when you breathe in all day long, be the perfect way to express an incessant misery?

Example 3: Agitated Breathing

Other Old Testament uses of the word rûaḥ are similarly literal. For example, in Genesis 41:8, after having his two nightmares, Pharaoh’s “spirit was troubled.” Once again, spirit is rûaḥ. In this case, the word “troubled” means “agitated,” or to be super literal, “was beating/tapping regularly.” In other words, he was so disturbed by his dreams, his inhaling and exhaling were happening in a choppy manner instead of a smooth, steady flow. We’ve all had such an experience in a time of severe alarm or distress.

Why This Matters

American Christians struggle to connect with their feelings and emotions. The Bible (especially the Old Testament) helps us with this by using language that ties our emotional states to certain physical sensations or conditions, such as our insides feeling like they’re being boiled or our breathing being choppy instead of smooth. But our Bible translators, because they’re enmeshed in the very same cultural problem, rush to cover up this clear language with more abstract notions, disconnecting the tangible thing we can perceive (in this case “breath”) from the intangible concept it represents (in this case “spirit”).

Without its connection to our breath, the meaning of a “spirit” is unclear. If we have a spirit, where is it? What parts of us is it connected to? How do we perceive its behavior within us? Hence, even when abstractions are used in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, they must have an anchor to something tangible we can perceive in ourselves.

There is almost certainly a plethora of other places where the Bible’s way of seeing things could be a benefit to us, if only we read it as it was written. Until this is understood and accepted by popular Bible translators, however, we must bear in mind that what we read in translation is not always what the Bible says.