Every language has idioms: phrases whose meaning is not the sum of their words. An English speaker who “kicks the bucket” has not kicked anything, and someone who is “under the weather” is not standing in the rain. A translator who renders idioms word for word produces nonsense, or worse, something that sounds like sense and means the wrong thing.
The Bible is full of idioms. Its first readers understood them without thinking. Some have passed into English through older translations; others remain puzzling. This article looks at several, and at what Open Word Bible does with each.
Idioms are one of the categories the project uses for meaning decisions. The records contain thousands of them. A meaning decision in this category says what an idiom means, in words any language can then put into its own form. Then each level decides how to word it. The style guide gives the general rule for Readable: it explains idioms instead of reproducing them. Literal and Balanced decide case by case.
Girding the loins
People in the ancient Near East wore long robes. To work, run or travel, a man gathered up the lower part and tucked it into his belt at the waist. That is what “gird up the loins” means. It is a picture of getting ready for action.
At the first Passover, Israel was told to eat dressed this way, ready to leave Egypt in a hurry. The meaning decision for Exodus 12:11 explains the picture. The levels then handle it differently:
And thus you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It [is] a Passover to the LORD.
When you eat it, be ready to set out: robes tucked into your belts, sandals on, staffs in hand. Eat it quickly. It is the LORD’s Passover.
Literal keeps “your loins girded”. Balanced says what it looked like: “robes tucked into your belts”. Readable says “Tie up your robes”. The rendering decision is short: Balanced and Readable explain the idiom, and Literal keeps it.
The same picture is literal in 1 Kings 18:46, where Elijah, given strength by the LORD, tucks up his robe and runs ahead of King Ahab’s chariot all the way to Jezreel. Readable adds why: “He tied up his long robe so he could run.”
Jesus uses it as a command in Luke 12:35: “Let your waists be girded and your lamps burning.” Balanced gives “Stay ready for work, with your belt tied”, and the rendering decision explains that “gird” is an old word.
Peter takes the picture one step further. In 1 Peter 1:13 he tells his readers to gird up “the loins of your mind”. The meaning decision connects it to the Passover meal and to Jesus’ words in Luke, and says Peter applies the picture to the mind. Literal keeps it; Balanced and Readable give the sense:
So brace your minds for action and stay clear-headed. Put your hope entirely on the grace that is coming to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.
The rendering decision gives the reason in a sentence: readers today do not wear robes tied with a belt. The article Word for word or meaning for meaning? opens with this verse.
Heaping coals of fire
Proverbs 25:21–22 gives surprising advice. If your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, “for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.” Paul quotes the saying in Romans 12:20.
What does it mean? The picture is of burning pain, but scholars disagree about what the pain is. The record for Proverbs 25:22 marks the meaning decision uncertain and gives a footnote, because the exact picture is debated:
- Most often it is taken as the burning shame that undeserved kindness brings, which can lead the enemy to change.
- Some point to an Egyptian text that describes a penitent carrying a basin of coals on the head, as a sign of repentance.
- Others take it as judgment, since coals are elsewhere a picture of punishment (Psalm 140:11). On that reading, kindness heaps up the enemy’s guilt if he stays hostile.
The record follows the first reading, and notes that in Romans 12:20–21 the saying serves the call to overcome evil with good, which favors it. The record for Romans 12:20 reaches the same decision, adding that the judgment reading sits poorly with Paul’s commands in verses 14 and 17–19 to bless persecutors and never repay evil for evil.
Here Balanced keeps the idiom. It is famous, vivid and short, and an explanation would add words the Hebrew does not have:
for you will be heaping burning coals on their head, and the LORD will reward you.
Readable explains it in the sense the meaning decision chose:
This will make them burn with shame for what they did, and perhaps they will change. And the LORD will reward you.
The rendering decision for that Readable wording is marked uncertain too, because it states a sense that is itself uncertain. In Romans, Readable keeps the picture and adds a sentence, “Your kindness may make them ashamed and sorry”, and the rendering decision notes that “may” keeps it open, and asks reviewers to check that it does not say too much.
Hardening the heart
In Exodus, Pharaoh’s heart is “hardened”. In English this sounds like an emotion: a hard-hearted person is cruel or unfeeling. In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought and will, not mainly of feeling, and a hard heart is a stubborn will.
The record for Exodus 7:3 adds something an English reader cannot see. Exodus uses three different verbs for what happens to Pharaoh’s heart: “make hard”, “make strong” and “make heavy”. All three describe a will set firmly against God’s command. Sometimes God is the subject, sometimes Pharaoh himself, and sometimes the heart simply “is” hard or heavy. The footnote says that the text holds these together without explaining how.
Open Word Bible keeps the verbs apart where it can. In Exodus 8:11 (8:15 in most English Bibles) Pharaoh himself is the subject, and the verb is the one from the root “heavy”:
And Pharaoh saw that there was relief, and he made his heart heavy and did not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.
Literal says “made his heart heavy” to show the Hebrew verb. Balanced says “hardened his heart”, the familiar English idiom. Readable says “he made himself stubborn”, and in 7:3 “I will make Pharaoh stubborn”: it says plainly what a hard heart is.
This is a case where the idiom carries theology. Readers have long argued over what it means that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. The translation’s task is not to settle that argument but to let readers see what the text says, including who is the subject of each verb. That is why Literal keeps three verbs where most English Bibles have one.
Lifting up the face
The priestly blessing in Numbers 6 ends with “May the LORD lift up his face toward you, and give you peace.” The meaning decision explains: to lift up the face toward someone is to look at them and pay them heed. The opposite is for God to hide his face, leaving his people alone in trouble.
May the LORD lift up his face to look on you and grant you peace.”’
Balanced keeps the picture and adds “to look on you”, which brings out what the lifted face does. Readable says “turn toward you and care for you”.
The same idiom can point the other way. In Leviticus 19:15, judges are told not to “lift up the face of the poor” or “honor the face of the great”. The meaning decision says that to lift a person’s face is to show them favor, here in court, and a judge must not favor anyone because of who they are. Balanced says “take the side of the poor because they are poor” and “give special honor to the powerful”.
So the same Hebrew words can describe God’s blessing in one place and a corrupt judge in another. Favor from God is a gift. Favor from a judge, shown to a person instead of to the truth, is injustice. An idiom cannot be translated by formula. Each context has its own decision.
Uncovering the ear
In 1 Samuel 9:15, the day before Saul arrives, the LORD “had uncovered the ear of Samuel”. The phrase is גָּלָ֖ה אֶת־אֹ֣זֶן שְׁמוּאֵ֑ל. The meaning decision explains it: to uncover someone’s ear is to tell them something privately, a secret or a plan, and when God is the speaker it means revelation.
English has no such phrase, and “uncovered his ear” would sound strange. Literal keeps it. Balanced says “the LORD had revealed this to Samuel”. Readable says “the LORD had told Samuel a secret”, which keeps something of the private, whispered feeling.
Bowels of compassion
The King James Version has Paul say, in Philippians 1:8, “how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ”. In 1611 that was dignified English. The inner organs were thought of as the seat of strong feeling, as we now speak of the heart. Today it sounds anatomical, or comic.
The Greek word is σπλάγχνον (splanchna). The meaning decision gives its sense: deep affection, felt in the inner being. It lists “bowels (the literal organs)” among the alternatives and sets it aside. A second decision adds a point about the phrase as a whole: Paul does not love them merely with his own feelings, but with the tender love of Christ Jesus at work in him.
God is my witness how much I long for every one of you with the deep love of Christ Jesus.
Hebrew has the same way of speaking. When Joseph sees his brother Benjamin in Genesis 43:30, Literal says “his compassion grew warm toward his brother”. The meaning decision explains that the Hebrew word for compassion refers to the inner parts, felt as the seat of tender love, and that literally they “grew hot”. Balanced says “his heart was so stirred for his brother”, trading one body-part idiom for another that English readers understand.
Sometimes the best rendering of an idiom is an English one that means the same: “heart” for “bowels”, or “sweat of your brow” for “sweat of your face” (Genesis 3:19). Each such trade is a recorded rendering decision.
Why the levels differ
Across these examples a pattern appears.
Literal keeps the idiom, so that a reader can see the original’s picture. “Your loins girded”, “uncovered the ear”, “made his heart heavy”. It is the level for a reader who wants to know what the text actually says, word by word.
Balanced decides case by case. Where an idiom is well known in English and its meaning is clear, it often keeps it: “heaping burning coals”, “lift up his face”. Where it would puzzle or mislead, it gives the sense: “robes tucked into your belts”, “revealed this to Samuel”.
Readable explains. It is written for readers who may not know the culture behind the picture, and it says what the idiom means: “Tie up your robes”, “told Samuel a secret”, “made himself stubborn”.
Behind all three is a single meaning decision, the same for every language. A Spanish or Swahili rendering may find its own idiom for the same sense, or explain it, but it does not change what the idiom means. That is the principle explained in Literal, Balanced, Readable: three levels, one meaning.
For other places where Hebrew resists English, see Wordplay that can’t be translated and Hebrew poetry and parallelism.
Open Exodus 12, 1 Peter 1, Proverbs 25, Numbers 6 and Philippians 1 to see the records.