Safe Room

You are my protection and my shield; I hoped for Your word.  Psalm 119:114    Chabad

Protection – Interpretive translation.  That’s when the translator decides that the reader isn’t smart enough to understand the text as it is written and so he interprets the text by changing the translation so that it actually becomes the meaning rather than the words.  Robert Alter has something to say about this:

“ . . . the Bible itself does not generally exhibit the clarity to which its modern translators aspire: the Hebrew writers reveled in the proliferation of meanings, the cultivation of ambiguities, the playing of one sense of a term against another, and this richness is erased in the deceptive antiseptic clarity of the modern versions.”[1]

“ . . . modern English versions, impelled by the misconception that modern readers cannot make sense of parataxis [the placing of clauses or phrases one after another] and that everything in the biblical text needs to be explained.”[2]

“ . . . 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.”[3]

Even Jewish renditions into English often follow this pattern.  Such is the case here.  The actual Hebrew word is sēter, “hiding place.”  Note the TWOT comment:  “The root in its basic meaning ‘hide’ is common to West, Southwest, and Southeast Semitic. The subordinate thought of protection involved in the root, which helps to distinguish it from its synonyms ʿālam ‘conceal’ and ḥābāʾ ‘withdraw,’ ‘hide,’ is reflected in such Amorite names as Sitř-Baḫlum, ‘Baal is my protection.’”^[4]

So, the NASB gives us the direct translation, “You are my hiding place . . .” while the Chabad version chooses to substitute the meaning for the term.  “So what?” you ask.  “Does this really change anything?”  Well, maybe.  Alter’s point is that the Hebrew text often plays with the multiple meanings of a single word.  We’ve seen that over and over in this psalm.  But when I translate the word by adopting one of the meanings, I remove the ambiguity and the possibility that more than one thing is intended.  If I translate the word as “protection,” I won’t see the connections to other uses of “hide” or “hiding place,” not all of which are about protection (e.g., Job 3:23, Isaiah 40:7, Psalm 18:11).  While this verse parallels Psalm 32:7 and 91:1,  we should not forget that this is only one meaning of the word.  Even God is described as hiding, and it certainly isn’t for protection.

What do we learn?  Well, first we learn to be cautious readers of translated texts.   We learn to ask, “What is the word being translated here?  Does it have an umbrella of meanings?  Is the author asking us to think of more than one thing?” Secondly, we realize that we have contributed to this translation travesty.  How?  By being too lazy to learn the original. Any scholar will tell you that if you want to understand the writings of someone whose native tongue is not your own, you must learn his language.  James and Peter knew this.  Remember the remark: “For from ancient generations Moses has those who preach him in every city, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21).  Do you suppose they read Moses in Mandarin?  The audience in the first Messianic synagogues were not all Jews, but they learned Hebrew because that was the language of Moses.  If we’ve grasped anything at all over all the years we’ve been investigating these Scriptures, we’ve learned that translations leave a lot on the table.  We’ll have to work harder if we want a truly deep faith.

Oh, and then we can understand why the NASB says “I wait for Your word,” but Chabad says, “I hoped for Your word.”  It’s the same verb, yāḥal, and it means both—on purpose.

Topical Index: protection, hiding place, sēter, translation, meaning, Acts 15:21, Psalm 119:114

[1] Robert Alter, The Art of Bible Translation (Princeton University Press, 2019), p. 10.

[2] Ibid., p. 4.

[3] Ibid., p. 7.

^[4] Patterson, R. D. (1999). 1551 סָתַר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 636). Moody Press.