This article offers a postcolonial reading of Psalm 93, examining its articulation of divine kingship through the lens of African political theology. The psalm’s bold affirmation, “The Lord reigns,” evokes a theocratic worldview rooted in the sovereignty, stability, and moral authority of Yahweh. By situating Psalm 93 within its ancient Near Eastern context and bringing it into dialogue with African notions of sacred kingship, the study explores how Indigenous African concepts of rule—often spiritual, communal, and morally grounded—resonate with biblical theocracy. Drawing on postcolonial hermeneutics, I interrogate the colonial disruptions that have displaced traditional African governance models and evaluate the potential of Psalm 93 to contribute to a theological reclamation of divine authority in post-colonial African contexts. My analysis challenges Western secular frameworks that have historically marginalised both biblical theocracy and African spiritual-political systems. Ultimately, the study seeks to reimagine theocratic discourse not as a regressive political ideal, but as a theological resource for restoring justice, legitimacy, and ethical leadership in African societies emerging from the shadows of colonialism.
Despite possessing the literal meaning “one who is sent,” Hebrew malʾak is almost universally translated into English as “angel” (a transcription of Greek angelos) when the referent is a divine being and as “messenger” when the referent is a human being. However, the Hebrew makes no such distinction between divine and human malʾakîm. Moreover, it is both unnecessary and confusing, since Greek angelos also carries the literal meaning “messenger” in English. More importantly, the biblical malʾakîm, whether human or divine, do not exclusively serve as messengers. While they are often sent to relay a message, this is certainly not always the case. Acknowledging this, Bible translations tend to inconsistently render malʾak based on the perceived context (e.g., ambassador, messenger, angel), as determined by the modern interpreter. For all of the above reasons, it is argued that the English “emissary” (from Latin emissarius, “one who is sent”) can and should be employed in all cases, since the purpose of a Bible translation ought to be to provide an accurate account of what was written, with as little subjectivity or bias as possible.
Scholars have long observed that Biblical Hebrew differs from English and other Indo-European languages in its verbal system. Levinsohn notes that Hebrew conveys aspect rather than tense, requiring translators to infer tense from context, while LaSor underscores the importance of interpreting Hebrew terms within their native linguistic framework. This article explores why Biblical Hebrew prioritises aspect over tense and investigates whether this distinction carries significant implications for interpretation and the construction of meaning. To engage these questions, the study examines how cultural world-views serve as an underlying factor in the prominence of aspectual verbs in Xhosa and Biblical Hebrew, providing a comparative lens for deeper linguistic and hermeneutical insights.
African students are taught the grammar of Biblical Hebrew (BH) from the perspective of Western languages, even though African languages have some features closer to BH than Western ones. It is observed that African students, especially those who speak Sesotho, find it challenging to understand and translate left dislocation in BH. The development of scholars' understanding of this construction has led to confusion between left dislocation and topicalisation. This article intends to address these problems to provide students with an understanding of left dislocation and topicalisation in Sesotho by comparing the Sesotho constructions with those in BH. This endeavour supports an overarching strategy of South African universities to decolonise the curriculum. The theoretical framework on which this study is based is linguistic typology, which is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow multiple comparisons of the crosslinguistic data. By recognising the similarities and differences between Sesotho and BH, Sesotho students will better understand BH left dislocation. In comparing and contrasting these two languages, we will critically examine the Sesotho Bible translation of 1909, revised in 1961, and the translation of 1989(R), which is currently under revision.
This article considers more carefully Raymond Martin's methodology, syntax criticism, proposes a renewal of Martin's work using more recent textual data, and proposes changes to Martin's method that include discarding certain criteria and proposing newer ones. The advances on Martin's work by Karen Jobes are also evaluated and refined. After thorough examination of Martin and Jobes's prior labours, entirely novel translation Greek control data for Septuagint preposition ratios are provided, as well as entirely novel data for the frequencies of kai and de in Septuagint texts. It is hoped that these data become standardised translation Greek control data.
