Translating the Legal Terms: Making Sense of a Messy Venn Diagram

Translating the litany of Old Testament legal terms is complicated at best, and frustrating at worst. The four primary legal terms (mishpat, mitzvah, torah, and choq) and the many other less common terms (e.g., edut, mishmeret, etc.) at times appear to function distinctively, and at other times appear to function as mere synonyms. This often leaves the translator feeling as though the terms are best represented by a messy Venn diagram, rather than nice distinct categories of meaning. And when multiple terms appear together to describe the law, translators may struggle to find enough terms in their language to represent the Hebrew concepts (e.g., 2Ki 17:37). Using the Key Terms of the Old Testament project (KTOT) as a foundation, this paper examines the legal terms and proposes a way to understand their seemingly synonymous meanings based on lexical analyses with specific attention to their relationship with the ancient Near East legal system. This paper also examines issues in translation, with a specific focus on difficult passages, and proposes factors to consider when translating these terms regarding both the Hebrew context and the target language context which may have a very different legal perspective that will affect translation choices.