You shall make response: a compound verbal phrase is used, “you will declare and say”; see 21.7. This is a formal statement. Another way to render this is “you will recite these words.”
Before the LORD your God: see 1.6.
A wandering Aramean: here Aramean means a native of Aram, modern Syria. Most take it to mean Jacob, but some others think it is Abraham. Jacob, however, seems to be more likely. This is the only place in the Old Testament where the noun Aramean appears. Instead of wandering (so most translations), some take the Hebrew to mean “ailing” or “perishing.” It seems better to take the sense as wandering, which means not having a fixed place to live, or “moving from place to place.” “Homeless” (Contemporary English Version) is misleading, since that means “not having a house or place to live in”; but Jacob lived in a tent, which was considered to be his home.
My father: “my ancestor,” that is, Jacob. But Jacob’s name should not appear in the text. For father or “ancestor” see 1.8.
He went down into Egypt: from Canaan, or possibly from Haran if the reference is to Abraham. The phrase went down is the conventional way of speaking in Hebrew about going from Canaan to Egypt; it does not mean descending from the mountains to the plains (although it is true that Egypt was lower in altitude than Canaan). An alternative model for this clause and the previous one is “My ancestor was an Aramean who moved from place to place. Eventually he and his family went to Egypt to live.”
Sojourned: that is, he lived in Egypt as a foreigner, a resident alien (see 1.16).
Few in number: that is, he and his family were few. In Gen 46.8-27 it is recorded that Jacob and his family numbered seventy in all when they went to Egypt. The Revised Standard Version translation and he went down into Egypt … few in number does not clearly state that Jacob had his family with him. Contemporary English Version keeps the same clause order but is somewhat clearer, with “who went to live in Egypt. There were only a few in his family then….” Good News Translation has a better model, “who took his family to Egypt to live. They were few in number….”
He became a nation: that is, he and his family, who were few at first, eventually became a large ethnic community in Egypt (see Exo 1.7).
Great, mighty, and populous: these are very similar in meaning, and it is not necessary to find three different adjectives in order to represent faithfully the meaning of the text. Great and mighty may be combined in a number of languages; they refer to the corporate strength of a large group of people rather than the physical strength of an individual. Instead of populous something like “numerous” (so Revised English Bible), or even “a large number of people,” is better.
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 .