a jealous God?

In Numbers 25:11 we come across the idea, as in other places in the Old Testament, of God as a “jealous” God. Even in English, jealousy has negative connotations. We usually imagine it as an ugly, uncontrolled reaction rather than a valid emotion.

Numbers 25 begins with the people of Israel being enticed away from worshipping their God and turning to the idol worship of their Madianite neighbours.

A fairly literal translation of the Hebrew of Numbers 25:11 says, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.” (If you want to know exactly what he did then you can go and read the whole story in Numbers 25!)

The draft Monkolé translation said, “Fineɛzi woo weeu, amai Eleazaa, tɔkui Arɔ̃ɔ woo weeu, í sinda idɔɔkɔ̃m hai si inɛi Izirɛli ŋau domi himmam í naa siɛ si anini nŋa. Ŋɔi í jɔ̀ si idɔɔkɔ̃m nɔu n kù kpa inɛi Izirɛli ŋau fei má.”

A literal translation of this would be “Phinehas the priest, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, turned my anger from the people of Israel for my zeal came upon him among them. He made that in my anger I didn't kill all the people of Israel.”

One of the Monkolé translators said that “zeal” didn't seem right to him in this example. We therefore discussed the concept of jealousy, which I thought was “igu” in Monkolé, but the translators said no, only women experience “igu”, for men it is called something different. Both words, however, have negative connotations in the same way that jealousy does in English.

So we looked at the way various versions treated it. Few modern translations in English or French use “jealousy”, so we looked at what they had done and ended up saying “he refused to accept that they turn from me to worship idols instead”. We do lose something in the translation, because with the word “jealousy” comes an implicit image of God as a husband and Israel as an unfaithful wife (a recurring image throughout the Old Testament). But unless we made the image entirely explicit by adding things which weren't in the original, we would be running the risk of making it very difficult to understand if not misleading.

These sorts of decisions are always difficult to make, and I'm not always sure if we have made the right one. That's when I am glad we work in a team, and that our work is always checked by a translation consultant. It also encourages me to continue to pray for discernment and wisdom!