This may need to be moved to Missions, Educating your child, or the Law of God.
For a long time I've been teaching English to a group of older children from our ethnic group. One of the issues with which I've struggled from the beginning is their habits of expressing surprise with "B'Yesus sim", translatable "In the name of Jesus". Now they understand that this is morally wrong, that it is using God's name in vain, and they don't do it in my presence.
Now we are reading through the historical books. Repeatedly we read of David, a man after God's own heart, doing what seems (in this vernacular) to be the same thing. The latest example is in 2 Samuel 3:35. A literal word-by-word back translation is "May God kill me if I see/try bread or other food," saying this he swore". In this case the word is the generic word for God. In other cases, to emphasize the truth of something the Hebrew proper name, Jehovah, is used, as in "The LORD knows"---to be the case. I would like to purge the translation of these expressions, but then presumably the translation would not be true to the Hebrew. [I was personal friends with the translators and know them to be upright, not given to misusing God's name.] Right now I'm ignoring these instances, but they make me very uncomfortable. I know (and my children know) that if they used God's name similarly, I would come down hard on them. Any wisdom?
For a long time I've been teaching English to a group of older children from our ethnic group. One of the issues with which I've struggled from the beginning is their habits of expressing surprise with "B'Yesus sim", translatable "In the name of Jesus". Now they understand that this is morally wrong, that it is using God's name in vain, and they don't do it in my presence.
Now we are reading through the historical books. Repeatedly we read of David, a man after God's own heart, doing what seems (in this vernacular) to be the same thing. The latest example is in 2 Samuel 3:35. A literal word-by-word back translation is "May God kill me if I see/try bread or other food," saying this he swore". In this case the word is the generic word for God. In other cases, to emphasize the truth of something the Hebrew proper name, Jehovah, is used, as in "The LORD knows"---to be the case. I would like to purge the translation of these expressions, but then presumably the translation would not be true to the Hebrew. [I was personal friends with the translators and know them to be upright, not given to misusing God's name.] Right now I'm ignoring these instances, but they make me very uncomfortable. I know (and my children know) that if they used God's name similarly, I would come down hard on them. Any wisdom?