A Glorious, Yet Often Misunderstood and Mistranslated, Picture of Christ
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we demonstrated that the phrases “Root of Jesse” and “Root of David” are best understood as referring to Jesus as Jesse and David’s source or origin. Moreover, we showed how Jesus being the “Root” of Jesse and David connects to, yet contrasts with, Jesus being the “Branch” (צֶ֣מַח tsemach), “Offspring” (γένος genos), or “Son” (בֵּן ben; υἱός huios) of David. This complementary contrast is seen most clearly in Revelation 22:16 (“I am the Root and the Offspring of David”), which occurs shortly after a series of complementary yet contrasting pairs in Revelation 22:13: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Jesus’ nature and identity are revealed here, and there are strong reasons to believe that the idea of Jesus as the “Root” of David and Jesse likewise carries important theological implications for the nature and identity of Jesus the Messiah—namely, that He is the very Origin of Jesse, David, and the entire royal line.
Given this theological importance, it is essential that translators handle this term with care to ensure that this meaning be available to readers to understand and appreciate. Unfortunately, the widespread interpretation of “Root of Jesse/David” as being simply a synonym for “shoot” or “branch” from David’s line (that is, his descendant), which we have shown is not the best interpretation of the phrase, has had a huge influence on many translations—in particular, on translations that engage in a higher degree of interpretation and explanation of the text on behalf of readers, rather than allowing readers to decide for themselves what “root” means here. In addition, some earlier influential translations have retained the image of “root,” but have eliminated the contrast in Revelation 22:16, thereby obscuring the theological clarity of this contrast.
Mistranslating “Root” as “Descendant”
Let us begin by looking at Revelation 5:5 in an influential English translation of the 20th century, the Good News Translation (originally known as the “Good News Bible”):
“Look! The Lion from Judah’s tribe, the great descendant of David, has won the victory” (GNT)
The Good News translators were protégés of Eugene Nida, whose ideas of “dynamic” or “functional equivalence” have been highly influential among United Bible Societies and Wycliffe/SIL translators. Nida’s ideas form the root of “meaning-based” translation methods, and he personally promoted the Good News Bible as a showcase of his ideas applied to English Bible translation.1Eugene Albert Nida, Good News for Everyone: How to Use the Good News Bible (Today’s English Version) (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977). The Good News Bible was the name of the original release in 1976. In 2001, it was renamed the Good News Translation in the United States, but the translation of the verses mentioned in this paper remained the same.
Nida believed that “accuracy” in translation should be measured primarily by readers’ comprehension:
[A]ccuracy in translation cannot be reckoned merely in terms of corresponding words but on the basis of what the new readers actually understand.2Nida, Good News for Everyone, 13. See also Eugene Nida and Charles Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 173.
Elsewhere, he and Charles Taber state:
Even the old questions: ‘Is this a correct translation?’ must be answered in terms of another question, namely: ‘For whom?’ Correctness must be determined by the extent to which the average reader for which a translation is intended will be likely to understand it correctly. Moreover we are not concerned merely with the possibility of his understanding correctly, but with the overwhelming likelihood of it. In other words we are not content merely to translate so that the average receptor is likely to understand the message; rather we aim to make certain that such a person is very unlikely to misunderstand it.3Nida and Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, 1. [emphasis added]
This emphasis on reader comprehension led Nida, and many others who followed and further developed his philosophy, to seek to explain and interpret images in the Bible that they deemed confusing to readers. In the case of Revelation 5:5 in the Good News Translation, the translators removed the idea of “root” here, treating it as an unnecessarily fancy and confusing way of saying “descendant.”
Similarly, in Revelation 22:16, the Good News Translation treats “root” and “offspring” as redundant ways of referring to the same concept, and eliminates the distinction:
“I am descended from the family of David” (Revelation 22:16, GNT)
Ironically, the translators of the Good News Translation, in their quest for clarity, have tragically obscured the beautiful truth that Jesus is not only the descendant of David, but also his very Root.
The Root of Many Mistranslations
The Good News Translation has had a huge impact on many later translations. For example, the Spanish Dios Habla Hoy translation, produced by the United Bible Societies and inspired by the same translation methodology, translates Revelation 22:16 as:
«Yo soy el retoño que desciende de David.» (Dios Habla Hoy)
“I am the shoot that descends from David.” (Author’s translation of the Spanish)
Here too, we see the same understanding of “root” (rhiza) as referring to descent rather than source or origin, and the same belief that “root” and “offspring” are unnecessarily redundant, rather than the beautifully contrasting and complementary opposites that we demonstrated in Part 1. The Dios Habla Hoy translation of this verse is not a translation of the English Good News Bible, but the translators are clearly “reading from the same notes.” Both translations make it impossible for readers to understand from this verse that Jesus is the one from whom David—and all creation—comes.
The German Hoffnung für alle translation produced by Biblica likewise follows suit:
“Ich bin der Nachkomme aus der Familie von David, der Trieb, der aus seiner Wurzel hervorsprießt.”
“I am the descendant of the family of David, the shoot that sprouts from his root.” (Author’s translation of the German)
Again, we see that the translators are not simply following the Good News wording mindlessly, yet they treat this verse quite similarly. Even though they keep a word meaning “root” in the translation (Wurzel), they treat David as the root rather than Jesus, making Jesus purely subordinate to and coming after David, rather than being both David’s Offspring and his Root, just as He is both David’s Son and David’s Lord (Matthew 22:42-45). The French La Bible du semeur, also produced by Biblica, follows the Hoffnung für alle in subordinating “root” and making Jesus merely the offspring of David’s root,4“Je suis le rejeton de la racine de David, son descendant.” (“I am the shoot from the root of David, his descendant.”) rather than being Himself the very Root of David.
The Thai New Contemporary Bible produced by Biblica has:
เราเป็นทายาทและเป็นเชื้อสายของดาวิด
“I am the heir and am [of] the lineage of David.” (Author’s translation of the Thai)
Although they have a footnote on “heir” noting that the Greek says “root,”5In Thai: ภาษากรีกว่าราก they interpret this as meaning “heir” rather than source or origin. While some astute readers may question the interpretation given in the text, others may now be even more likely to understand the term “root” as referring to descendant rather than source or origin even when reading from a translation that retains the botanical metaphor. Meanwhile, the Thai New Testament Easy-to-Read Version produced by the World Bible Translation Center simply has เราสืบเชื้อสายมาจากครอบครัวของดาวิด” (“I am descended from the family of David”), similar to the Good News Translation in English. The complementary yet contrasting pair is completely subsumed, and the possibility of “Root” referring to source or origin is eliminated from the readers’ view.
Why do so many of these translations misinterpret the meaning of “Root” in these verses? Beyond the influence of the Good News Bible itself, the commentaries and translators’ notes used by most translators in the UBS and SIL give “descendant” as the “correct” meaning of “root” here. For example, the UBS Handbook Series for Revelation 22:16 states, “The phrase root and offspring means ‘descendant.’ Here root is used in the sense of what comes from the root, that is, a shoot.”6Robert G. Bratcher and Howard Hatton, “A Handbook on the Revelation to John,” UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1993), 322–323. Likewise, SIL’s Translator’s Notes for the verse says, “Here the word Root probably refers to a shoot that grows from the root.”7Steve Christensen, “Translator’s Notes on Revelation: Notes,” Translator’s Notes (Dallas: SIL International, 2020). Similarly, the SIL Exegetical Summary series for Revelation 5:5 states that “Root of David” means that “Jesus was a descendant of David,” and is “a metaphor meaning ‘offspring.’”8Ronald Trail, An Exegetical Summary of Revelation 1–11, 2nd ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2008), 136.
Thankfully, not all “meaning-based”9The phrase “meaning-based” is kept in quotes for this paper, because it is the author’s belief that true meaning-based translation strives to account for all aspects of the meaning, including lexical, metaphorical, poetic, and intertextual, and does not focus so strongly on maximizing the immediate comprehension of readers who have little or no background with Scripture. translations explicate the “root” metaphor as meaning “descendant”: for example, the Italian La Parola è Vita by Biblica keeps both the “root” (radice) and “descendant” (discendente) ideas intact,10“Io sono la radice e il discendente di Davide” (“I am the root and the descendant of David”) while the Arabic Easy-to-Read Version produced by the World Bible Translation Center calls Jesus David’s أصلُ (“origin”) and نَسلُ (“seed, offspring”).11 أنَا أصلُ دَاوُدَ وَنَسْلُهُ (“I am David’s origin and his offspring”) The English New Living Translation gives mixed results on this point: it elaborates on the theological contrast in Revelation 22:16 (“I am both the source of David and the heir to his throne”), but it translates “root of David” and “root of Jesse” as “heir to David’s throne” in Revelation 5:5, Romans 15:12, and Isaiah 11:10. It is not clear why they would treat the same messianic title “Root of David” (ἡ ῥίζα Δαυίδ) so differently in Revelation 5:5 versus 22:16.12This author’s linguistic competence does not extend beyond the examples already given in the text, but a brief survey suggests that the mistranslation of this verse exhibited in the Good News Translation is followed in languages as diverse as Bulgarian, Cebuano, Czech, Hindi, Macedonian, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, and others, in addition to those already mentioned.
…And a Few Scattered Shoots
While the Good News Translation and those like it mistakenly treat “root” as the equivalent of “descendant,” or make Jesus merely the offspring from David’s roots, rather than being the very Root of David as well as his Offspring, there is another mistranslation that far precedes those of Nida’s disciples. Martin Luther’s German translation of Revelation 22:16 reads:
“Ich bin die Wurzel des Geschlechts13In modern German, the word Geschlechts usually means “gender” or “generation,” and would likely be misunderstood by many readers (Pascal Buttkewitz, personal communication, 17 April 2020). It was presumably clearer in Luther’s day. David” (Revelation 22:16, Lutherbibel 1545)
“I am the root of the lineage of David” (Author’s translation of the German)
To compare again, the Greek of this clause reads:
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ῥίζα καὶ τὸ γένος Δαυίδ
I am the root and the offspring of David
Notice the word καὶ “and,” called a “coordinating conjunction,” which puts the two ideas together on the same level rather than subordinating one to the other. Luther, on the other hand, subordinates “lineage” (Geschlechts) to “root” (Wurzel)—making the opposite mistake of the Hoffnung für alle, which subordinates “root” to “shoot” (Trieb). In both cases, the complementary yet contrasting pair is lost, and with it the important witness here to Jesus’ human descent as well as divine origin.
Interestingly, the Italian Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, a translation commissioned by Catholic bishops in 1965, is remarkably similar to Luther’s translation:
“Io sono la radice della stirpe di Davide”
“I am the root of the lineage of David” (Author’s translation of the Italian)
Despite their similarity, the error here is almost certainly independent from Luther (it is unlikely that Italian Catholic bishops in 1965 were looking to Luther’s German translation for guidance!). In any case, both translations show that it is possible to lose meaning in either direction by subordinating or eliminating one aspect of the “Root” and “Offspring” meaning.
A Call for Realization, Revision, and Review
The primary purpose of this two-part series is to help people see and understand the beautiful truth that Jesus is both the “Root” and the “Shoot” or “Branch” of Jesse and David, that “Root” here is contrasting with, rather than synonymous with “Shoot” and “Branch,” and that these botanical terms paint a picture that powerfully reveals the divinity and humanity of the Messiah in both the Old and New Testaments. God’s truth is full of rich treasures, and this is surely a treasure that is worth seeing, loving, and preserving.
The secondary purpose is to call for revisions of translations that prevent readers from understanding “Root” as meaning “source” or “origin” in these passages, as well as translations that lose the contrast of “Root” (rhiza) with “Offspring” (genos) in Revelation 22:16. It is very likely that the vast majority of the translations that fail in one way or another to capture the beautiful contrast of Jesus as both the “Root” and the “Offspring” or “Branch” of Jesse and David do so merely out of translators’ simple failure to look carefully at the actual biblical usage, and that once translators see the contrast between the “Root” and “Offspring” or “Branch” imagery, they will eagerly desire to revise their translations of their own accord. Any translators who remain unconvinced should, at the very least, allow readers to decide for themselves what “root” means in these phrases.
Finally, in order for this truth to be preserved in future translations, it is important that exegetical tools and notes used by translators be corrected to make clear that the terms “root of Jesse” and “root of David” are best understood as referring to the Messiah as the source or origin of Jesse and David, rather than as a descendant from their roots. Once translation tools from the UBS, SIL, and others are revised to include the strong likelihood that these terms refer to origin and source rather than descent, readers of the resulting translations will be much more likely to have the opportunity to understand and take delight in the beautiful contrast presented in Scripture that Jesus is not only David’s “Offspring,” “Shoot,” or “Branch,” but that He also is in fact the very “Root” from whom David—and all of creation—has its existence.
Watch a video presentation on this topic by the author here.
Thank you for this study. Thankfully Almeida’s translation to Português maintained these distinctions.