8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
The phrase that is rendered in English versions as “land flowing with milk and honey” (“milk and syrup” in Goldingay [2018]) is translated into Afar as niqmatak tan baaxoy buqre kee lacah meqehiyya: “a blessed land good for fields and cattle.” (Source: Loren Bliese)
In the interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) it is translated with the existing proverb dziko lamwanaalirenji or “a land of what (type of food) can the child cry for?” (i.e. there is more than enough to eat). (Source: Ernst Wendland in The Bible Translator 1981, p. 107 )
In Kwere it is “good/fertile land.” (Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
The Hebrew word for “honey”, devash, is also used for syrup extracted from figs, dates, and grapes, or from certain types of palm tree. The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey” refers to a land that is fertile and thus rich in pasture, fruit, and the grain and flowers from which bees make honey. (Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators) )
In Russian, the phrase молоко и мед (moloko i med) or “milk and honey” is widely used as an idiom in every-day life. (Source: Reznikov 2020, p. 67)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Exodus 3:8:
Kupsabiny: “Therefore, I have come to rescue those people. I will migrate them from Egypt to a spacious land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites live. That land is of milk and honey.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “So I have come down to rescue/release them from the hand of the Egyptians and take them to the good and spacious country, the country of Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites where the milk and honey flows.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “So I have-come-down here to-save them from the hands of the Egiptohanon, and to-bring/take them to a good, wide/spacious, and fruitful land, which (is) the-place-where- the Canaanhon, Hithanon, Amornon, Periznon, Hivhanon, and Jebusnon now -live/dwell.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Bariai: “Therefore I came down to save them (lit. take/retrieve them back) from the Isip people’s hands. And I intend to bring them so that they leave Isip and then go live in a good land, which has a vast area, and it has rich soil (lit. big grease) and so honey (lit. beeswax fluid) and bulmakao’s breast milk coming forth in it. That area, today the following tribes are living in it: the Kenan and the It and the Amor and the Peres and the Ivi and the Iebus.” (Source: Bariai Back Translation)
Opo: “Therefore, I came down, that I might come save them from hand of people of Egypt, that I might take them place which be fertile which be wide, which honey and milk runs there. That place, that is what be place of Canaanites, and Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, with Jebusites.” (Source: Opo Back Translation)
English: “So I have come down from heaven to rescue them from the Egyptians. I have come to bring them up from that land to the highlands in Canaan. I will bring them to a land that is good/fertile and that has plenty of space. It will be very good for raising livestock and growing crops. It is the land where the descendants of Canaan, Heth, Amor, Periz, Hiv, and Jebus live.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.
One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.
I have come down suggests that God had come to that mountain from a higher level. It should be understood in contrast with the verb to bring them up. To deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians means “to rescue them from the Egyptians” (Good News Translation). The Hebrew word for “Egyptians” may also mean the land (“Egypt”) as well as the people. The hand of the Egyptians is a typical way of referring to “the power of Egypt” (New English Bible).
To bring them up out of that land is a frequently-repeated formula, where the verb “to bring up” alternates with the verb “to bring forth” (verse 10). Where the former is used, it probably suggests from the lowlands of Egypt to the highlands of Canaan, rather than from south to north. Good News Translation‘s “to bring them out of Egypt” does not make this distinction. In languages where the writer of Exodus is considered to be in Canaan, it may be necessary to show the “up” orientation and say, for example, “to bring them out of Egypt coming up to a land….”
A good and broad land means “a fertile and spacious land.” A broad or “spacious land” (Good News Translation) means “a big land,” or “a land with plenty of room.” It is also described as a land flowing with milk and honey, an idealistic picture of the “promised land” in the minds of desert nomads. Since this is figurative language, a literal translation may be meaningless. The meaning is “one that is rich and fertile.” Good News Translation has omitted “fertile” in the first phrase for reasons of style. If translators choose to keep the words milk and honey, they should know that the milk intended was goat’s milk, and the honey may have been a thick, sweet syrup made from dates, the fruit of the date tree, and not from bees. (But see the comment on honey at 16.31.)
The place of the Canaanites … is a further description of the land where six other ethnic groups “now live.” The origin of some of these groups is uncertain, and the form “-ites” does not distinguish between descendants of a person (such as Canaan) and inhabitants of a place (such as Jebus). If the translation must specify one or the other, it is best to consider them all people of a place. In many languages translators may refer to these people as “the people of Canaan,” “the people of Hit,” “the people of Amor,” and so on. (Gen 10.15-17 lists three of these groups as descendants of Canaan.)
Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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