O Lord GOD: in his prayer, Moses addresses God as Adonai Yahweh; only here and in 9.26 (also a prayer by Moses) is this title used in this book. Translators have the following options in translating “Adonai Yahweh.” One option is to follow Revised Standard Version; but the spelling GOD may seem strange to readers. Another option is to imitate Today’s English Version, or to say something like “Yahweh the All Powerful One,” or “Yahweh, our Lord,” or “Yahweh who is the Most Powerful.”
Thou hast only begun to show thy servant: Moses is confident that Yahweh will still perform many miracles and mighty acts in the future. To make clear that “your servant” refers to Moses himself, it may be well to translate “… to show me, your servant…” or simply to follow Today’s English Version and Contemporary English Version “me.”
Thy greatness and thy mighty hand: here hand stands for power, might, force. So the translation can be “your greatness and your power.” Bible en français courant has “you have shown me the first signs of your greatness and of your irresistible power.”
What god is there…? This is a rhetorical question, a way of stating “There is no god in heaven or on earth,” that is, no other god anywhere. The question does not deny the existence of other gods; it denies that any other god has the power that Yahweh, the God of Israel, has. God in small letters indicates a pagan deity. This term presents a difficult translation problem in many languages. A Handbook on the Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, iscusses the problem of “God” versus “god”:
In English the supreme God is differentiated from lesser gods or deities by the use of a capital letter. In many other languages this device is not suitable, for the term for God is only used for the Christian God, so it will seem strange to refer to other gods. There are two possible solutions. Translators may use a term or terms which refer to supernatural beings which non-Christians in the culture worship, or they may use the term for the Christian God with an adjective; for example, “false gods” or “small gods.” This will show that these are beings which are thought to be like God but are not really God.
The final sentence of this verse may be alternatively rendered as “No other god in the sky or on earth is able to do the mighty things that you do.” However, if a translator uses a term such as “small god” or “false god,” we may translate, for example, “If there are false gods in the sky or earth, they cannot do the mighty things that Yahweh has done.”
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .