출애굽기 4:10의 번역 제안과 이해 ― “입이 뻣뻣하고 혀가 둔한 자”를 중심으로 ―

Abstract

Translating a biblical passage is always a new challenge and difficult task that requires continuous thinking and choosing. Nevertheless, biblical scholars have the responsibility to willingly walk that path. In this article, I deal with Exodus 4:10 where Moses refuses YHWH’s calling by saying, “I am heavy of mouth and tongue.” The Korean Bible (1911) translates this sentence as “입도 둔하고 혀도 둔한쟈니이다”, which means “I have clumsy mouth and a tongue.” The Korean Revised Version (1938) reads “나는 입이 뻣뻣하고 혀가 둔한 자니이다”, which means “I am stiff of mouth and clumsy of tongue.” The MT reads “I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue”, but the foreign missionaries and their Korean assistants who worked on The Korean Bible did not know Hebrew, so they did not consult MT when they translated Exodus into Korean. Instead, they consulted Bibles in English, Chinese, and Japanese available at the time of translation. Therefore, I will look into these Bibles, and try to find some influences from them.BR First, English Bibles translate the phrase as “slow of mouth and tongue”. This means the Hebrew word kbd was translated into slow instead of heavy. So the relationship between the first Korean Bible and those English Bibles seems to be very weak. Second, the Chinese Bibles did not use the word 重 (meaning heavy), but instead used 拙 since the publication of the Delegates’ Version (1856). This Chinese character 拙 means slow or clumsy. Therefore these Chinese Bibles could have influenced The Korean Bible (1911). It was tragic when this translation was changed in the Korean Revised Version (1938) without any reasonable basis. The latter translation does not carry the MT meaning at all.BR In the case of the Japanese Bibles, Meiji Version (1887) uses the word 重, and it shows that the Japanese Bible translators got away from the influences of the Chinese Bibles and walked in their way. They might have tried to translate the sentence from MT. They did not choose the suitable translations from available Bibles (English, Chinese), but tried to translate the sentence as closely as possible to MT. In conclusion, Moses’s words in Exodus 4:10 needs to be either retranslated like the one in The Korean Bible (1911) or to do a round translation like “I am not eloquent.”