A Just War
The men of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh crossed over, ready for battle, in front of the Israelites, as Moses had directed them. Joshua 4:12 NIV
Ready for battle – What does the odd Hebrew word ḥămūšîm really mean? In the NIV it is translated “ready for battle,” but in the NASB it appears as “in battle array.” In other versions it’s “armed warriors,” or “dressed in full battle regalia.” Only the Literal Standard Version gives us a clue about the word’s etymology with the translation “by fifties.” What does that mean?
The Malbim explains (actually it is the commentary of Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser (March 7, 1809 – September 18, 1879), better known as the Malbim). The root of the word is the Hebrew for the number five. In this case, it is plural fives, or fifty. Rabbi Wisser explains that when Israel went to battle in this time, they divided into groups of fifty armed men, each group with a leader. These regiments were the cohesive fighting forces. The Hebrew text uses this designation, assuming that the reader will understand the significance of “by fifties.” Of course, modern English readers are completely lost, having little or no sense of ancient fighting tactics. Therefore, the translations gloss “by fifties” as “armed warriors,” or “battle array,” or something similar. It might be what the text means, but it’s not what the text says. A little explanatory footnote would have been nice.
But—do we really care? What’s the big deal if we still get the meaning? Isn’t that always the problem with translations, that is, how to get the meaning across in the receptor language? Eugene Peterson’s highly imaginative The Messagemakes this assumption. His expression can hardly be considered translations. Rather, they are attempts to convey the meaning of the biblical texts in contemporary language. Maybe that’s sufficient if all you are trying to do is entice readers to engage Scripture, but it’s a far cry from actually communicating what God said. Peterson’s Bible is simply an extreme form of that translators often do—convert ancient cultural expressions into supposed modern equivalents. So, “by fifties” becomes “dressed in full battle regalia.”
All of this matters, not simply because we might want to know precisely what the Hebrew text communicates but also because the biblical text is contextual. It’s wasn’t written for us. Its imagery, metaphors, idioms, and social expressions were written for an ancient audience. The depths of the text, the multiple layers of hints, intimations, and connections are completely lost when we convert “by fifties” into “full battle regalia,” or any number of other examples. We can’t see the development of the idea, the connection it has to other texts, the nuances of the expression when we lift it out of its original context. As Robert Alter put it: ““ . . . the impulse to explain through translation has still more dire consequences because it becomes an explanation to make the Bible conform to modern views or modern ideologies.”[1] “The translators appear to work on the assumption that readers of the Bible are rather dim and thus repeatedly need to have things spelled out for them.”[2]
“ . . . the words of the Bible should be conveyed, not explained.”[3]
“By fifties” seems rather harmless, a trifling accommodation for the reader’s benefit. But the the process reveals something far more concerning—the assumptions of the translator. In the end you will have to ask yourself, “Am I really so ignorant that I can’t be trusted to figure out what the text really says?”
Topical Index: by fifties, ḥămūšîm, translation, explanation, Joshua 4:12
[1] Robert Alter, The Art of Bible Translation (Princeton University Press, 2019), p. 7.
[2] Ibid., pp. 62-63.
[3] Ibid., p. 64.
