So now, my son, love your kindred: In verse 12 Tobit has reminded Tobias that his ancestors took wives from their own clans, and in this verse he urges Tobias to do the same. In many languages it will be good to keep the connector So and say, for example, “So my son….” Love your kindred is a literal rendering, interpreted by Good News Translation as “be loyal to your own relatives.”

In your heart do not disdain your kindred … by refusing to take a wife for yourself among them: The verb disdain comes from the same Greek root as the noun pride later in the verse. Good News Translation, by use of the words “proud” and “pride,” maintains this link, which is lost in New Revised Standard Version by its use of disdain and pride. Good News Translation also omits much of the repetition in this second sentence, and has simply “Don’t be too proud to marry one of them,” meaning your kindred. The phrase in your heart would in the original Hebrew mean “in your mind”; that is, “don’t think yourself too good to marry….” But this is what Good News Translation is saying. Contemporary English Version has “Don’t be proud and think that you are too good to marry an Israelite woman.” Translators must decide whether the phrase the sons and daughters in the original Greek will sound unnatural. If it does, either Good News Translation or Contemporary English Version may be used as a model.

For in pride there is ruin and great confusion: In New Revised Standard Version the sentence beginning For in pride appears to have no connection with Tobit’s counsel about the proper choice of a wife; it could as well be part of a new paragraph. Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version show the connection more clearly with “Such pride” and “Pride like that.” The ruinous pride spoken of is the arrogance of setting yourself up as superior to tradition, violating the tradition against an outside marriage. Ruin is coupled with confusion (Good News Translation “frustration”), which translates a word that has the sense of a lack of stability or continuity. In some languages translators will find suitable terms for both words, but in others they may be combined; for example, “Such pride will cause you to have a great instability in your life” or “… will cause you to have a life full of confusion.”

And in idleness there is loss and dire poverty: A connection needs to be made between the saying on “pride” and this one on “laziness.” Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version make the logical connection clear with “just as….” The saying in New Revised Standard Version sounds like an independent proverb, but the Greek does make the connection. Idleness or “laziness” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version) means “refusal to work,” resulting in “severe poverty” (Good News Translation). So we may say “just as a refusal to work will make you very poor.”

Because idleness is the mother of famine; that is, people who are idle will eventually not have enough to eat, precisely because of that idleness. This repeats the information in the previous clause, and the two clauses may be combined in many languages, as Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have done.

An alternative translation model for this verse is:

• My son, have love in your heart for [or, be loyal to] your relatives. Don’t be proud and think that you are too good to marry one of them. If you are proud like that you will have a very unstable life, just as refusing to work causes people to become very poor and starve.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Tobit. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.