Esther 8:9 – “Translators”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁹And the scribes of the king were called in the time of the that in the month of the third, it [was] the month of Sivan in the third and twentieth in it, and it was written according to the all of which Mordecai commanded to the Jews and to the satraps and the governors and the princes of the provinces which [were] from India and until Cush, seven and twenty and one hundred provinces, province and province, according to the writing of it and people and people according to their language and to the Jews according to their writing and according to their language..

Another observation from verse 9: It is interesting to me how Mordecai’s edict was written “to each province in its own script and to each people in its own language,” and, of course, that included “each of the 127 provinces from India to Cush.”  One group of people I have always admired is the Bible translators. I can’t help but note the similarities here. In our text, we have a very important and urgent message from the king. Of course, the king could have taken the posture that this is the Persian empire, therefore everyone will simply have to learn Persian, but he didn’t. Obviously, the royal mindset was that their messages were so important, it was imperative that they actually be translated into every language of every people throughout their empire.  They very deliberately wanted people to be able to read and hear those messages in their own language.

When it comes to the Bible, of course, we have a very important and urgent message from the King of kings. There was a time in church history when the Catholic Church had dictated that the Bible could not be translated into anything but Latin. John Wycliffe got himself posthumously declared a heretic and his bones exhumed and burned specifically for his work of translating the Bible into English. He died in 1384. It was in 1517, just over 130 years later, that Martin Luther posted his famous 95 theses on the Wittenberg Chapel door and sparked what became the Protestant Reformation. By 1534, he had translated the entire Bible into German. Had Luther not been protected by Frederick of Saxony, he would have probably been burned at the stake for such sacrilege.

More recently, we have had the “King James Only” movement of those who maintained the Bible could not be translated into any other English but the 1611 King James. No one got burned at the stake, but anyone who had anything to do with any other translation certainly got themself “black-listed.” I was always favorable myself to the King James as it was the Bible I was raised on and nearly all my verse memory was in King James. It’s still the Bible language in my head. Yet, knowing the original text was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, I was very aware that, no matter what, if people were to have a Bible in their own language, it would have to be translated.

The King James was actually a very excellent translation. To this day, as I work through my own translations of the original languages, I often check to see exactly what the King James fellows did with it. I am constantly amazed at how faithful they were to the original text. In my heart of hearts, I wish we still used it. However, I am also painfully aware that it is not written in modern English. The English language of 1611 was something very different than what we speak and write today. For those of us who were “teethed” on the King James, that is not so much of a problem, but for those who were not, they can pick it up, read it, and have absolutely no idea what it means.

I once had a young woman ask me about a particular problem she was having. My mind went immediately to a Bible verse that spoke directly to her problem. I read it to her and looked up, expecting to see the light in her eyes, but instead what I saw was a completely blank face. It spoke directly to her problem. It was right there in what I thought was plain English, but it was as if I’d read it in French or Spanish. She totally didn’t get it. I asked if she was okay with other translations (since at the time the King James Only movement was raging) and she was okay with them, so I read the same verse to her from an NIV Bible. Then when I looked up, I was looking into the eyes of a young woman who “got it.” I kept a stock of inexpensive NIV Bibles, so I gave her one. The next Sunday, she walked into church with eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. She excitedly told me how she had been reading that Bible all week and she actually understood it! That bright light in her eyes never diminished as long as I knew her.

What happened? She actually got to read the Bible in her own language. That event only cemented in my mind the determination that every people in every nation have the right to have a Bible in their own language, even if it meant the difference between the English of 1611 and that of our current day. 

One thing I should inject here is to say that I do not believe the NIV Bible is anywhere near the quality translation as that of the King James. I am constantly disappointed to see what the NIV translators have done with various passages. When it comes to faithfulness to the original text, there are other better translations available today, such as the New American Standard or English Standard Version. However, I can never get away from the plain, simple fact that the NIV did an excellent job of actually translating the Bible into modern English. The fact is it is easy to understand.

If you want to appreciate the challenge of Bible translation, just go back up and read my “fairly literal” translation of any passage. What I have tried to do is, as close as possible, to just translate word for word into English. And what do I get? I get a translation that is very difficult to understand. Mine is a translation which is very faithful to the original text…you just can’t understand it! You see, the work of a translator is not just to be faithful to the original, but also to express the text in the modern language of whoever will be reading it. In order to do that, you must make decisions how best to express it, being forced to add words, to turn it into sentences punctuated the way we do, even to express tenses and other grammatical devices which simply are not there. It is a very difficult balancing act and my hat is off to anyone who tries.

Which brings me back to my whole point: the king’s edict needed to be translated into the languages of the people. How much more important are the words of the King of kings? Every people group, in every nation deserve to have a Bible written in their own language so they can easily understand it. My hat is off to all the good people who have spent their lives trying to accomplish exactly that.

It will always be true, “When you know the truth, the truth shall make you free,”…but that truth has to be expressed in a language you can understand.  Translating the Bible into a people’s language is precisely a work to “set them free.” Like the young lady, one can only hope and pray, those Bibles do get into the hands of people who want to hear, who want to understand, and whose hearts will be “set free” by its message.

May the Lord bless those who take the message of the King of kings, who deliver it “to each province in its own script and to each people in its own language,” and who, as in our text, go out as “the couriers, riding the royal horses, went out, spurred on by the king’s command.”