לְךָ֤ לְבַדְּךָ֨ ׀ חָטָאתִי֮ וְהָרַ֥ע בְּעֵינֶ֗יךָ עָ֫שִׂ֥יתִי לְ֭מַעַן תִּצְדַּ֥ק בְּדָבְרֶ֗ךָ תִּזְכֶּ֥ה בְשָׁפְטֶֽךָ׃
4Against you, you alone, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
For the phrases “so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment,” see Romans 3:4.
Note that this quote in the New Testament is not taken from the Hebrew Bible but from the Greek Septuagint (LXX) which translates into English as “that you may be justified in your words and be victorious when you go to law.” (Translation by NETS — for the Greek version see the title’s tooltip)
The Hebrew that is translated as “before you,” “to you” or similar in English is translated in the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) as pamaso panu, lit. “on your eyes.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
See also before / in the sight of / presence of (God) (Japanese honorifics).
The Hebrew and Greek that is typically translated as “sin” in English has a wide variety of translations.
The Greek ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō) carries the original verbatim meaning of “miss the mark” and likewise, many translations contain the “connotation of moral responsibility.”
In Shipibo-Conibo the term is hocha. Nida (1952, p. 149) tells the story of its choosing: “In some instances a native expression for sin includes many connotations, and its full meaning must be completely understood before one ever attempts to use it. This was true, for example, of the term hocha first proposed by Shipibo-Conibo natives as an equivalent for ‘sin.’ The term seemed quite all right until one day the translator heard a girl say after having broken a little pottery jar that she was guilty of ‘hocha.’ Breaking such a little jar scarcely seemed to be sin. However, the Shipibos insisted that hocha was really sin, and they explained more fully the meaning of the word. It could be used of breaking a jar, but only if the jar belonged to someone else. Hocha was nothing more nor less than destroying the possessions of another, but the meaning did not stop with purely material possessions. In their belief God owns the world and all that is in it. Anyone who destroys the work and plan of God is guilty of hocha. Hence the murderer is of all men most guilty of hocha, for he has destroyed God’s most important possession in the world, namely, man. Any destructive and malevolent spirit is hocha, for it is antagonistic and harmful to God’s creation. Rather than being a feeble word for some accidental event, this word for sin turned out to be exceedingly rich in meaning and laid a foundation for the full presentation of the redemptive act of God.”
In Warao it is translated as “bad obojona.” Obojona is a term that “includes the concepts of consciousness, will, attitude, attention and a few other miscellaneous notions.” (Source: Henry Osborn in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 74ff. ). See other occurrences of Obojona in the Warao New Testament.
Martin Ehrensvärd, one of the translators for the Danish Bibelen 2020, comments on the translation of this term: “We would explain terms, such that e.g. sin often became ‘doing what God does not want’ or ‘breaking God’s law’, ‘letting God down’, ‘disrespecting God’, ‘doing evil’, ‘acting stupidly’, ‘becoming guilty’. Now why couldn’t we just use the word sin? Well, sin in contemporary Danish, outside of the church, is mostly used about things such as delicious but unhealthy foods. Exquisite cakes and chocolates are what a sin is today.” (Source: Ehrensvärd in HIPHIL Novum 8/2023, p. 81ff. )
See also sinner.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 51:4:
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed. The first example is from a language where God is always addressed distinctly formal whereas the second is one where the opposite choice was made.
Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.
As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.
In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.
Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”
In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.
Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking (source Philip Noss).
In Dutch and Western Frisian translations, however, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.
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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme rare (られ) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, a-rare-ru (あられる) or “(someone/who) is” is used.
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
The psalmist confesses his sin to God: I know my transgressions; know here has the sense of admitting or confessing to oneself; transgressions translates the same word used in verse 1b, and sin the word used in verse 2b. The expression is before me in verse 3b means “I am conscious of,” “I am aware of,” parallel with I know in verse 3a. The psalmist intends to confess all his sins; he will not hide anything. In languages which use a verb phrase for my sin, it will often be necessary to say, for example, “I know that I do evil deeds.”
He confesses that his sin was against God: Against thee, thee only is what he says. Some (see Taylor) point out that it would be difficult for David to have said that, since his sin was against Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, and against Bathsheba as well. But the ardor of the psalmist’s confession and his recognition that sin is primarily an offense against God are not the criteria for deciding the historical question of authorship. And it should be noted that David, when confronted with the denunciation of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah, confessed: “I have sinned against the LORD” (2 Sam 12.13). In some languages it is not possible to say that one has sinned against someone. To sin against is sometimes rendered “to sin in your eyes;” for example, “I have sinned in your eyes–only in your eyes.” It is also possible to say, for example, “I have sinned and offended you.”
In thy sentence (verse 4c) translates what is literally “in your speaking,” that is, in your pronouncing the sentence of “Guilty!” Some Hebrew manuscripts have “in your words,” which Briggs prefers and interprets as a reference to the Ten Commandments. In thy judgment in line d is parallel with in thy sentence in line c. Thou art justified in line c means that God does the right thing; he is not guilty of injustice in condemning the psalmist. The same thought is repeated in line d, and blameless, that is, God is not at fault; rather he is innocent of injustice or wrongdoing in his ruling.
Thou art justified in thy sentence may in some languages be rendered “you are right when you say that I am guilty” or, in direct discourse, “you are right when you say to me, ‘You are guilty.’ ” The expression blameless in thy judgment can sometimes be translated as “you are fair when you say that I am guilty” or “you judge me fairly when you condemn me.”
In Romans 3.4 Paul quotes the second half of verse 4 as translated by the Septuagint, with a meaning quite different from that of the Hebrew text.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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