Do you want to get fat?

I came across this proverb as part of my training to check other teams' translations, and thought it highlighted the importance of cultural understanding.

Proverbs 11:25

In Hebrew, it says something like:

“A person of blessing will be made fat, and the one who saturates will also be saturated.”

So what should I do if I don't want to get fat? Not bless people? In Darwin, I don't mind getting saturated...

Getting fat is, of course, supposed to be a good thing, a sign of having plenty, a reward, not a punishment! And saturating is about giving water or that which refreshes and sustains.

The New International Version makes some allowance for the fact that getting fat is not considered a good thing in our culture. It has:

“A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.”

Please pray for upcoming opportunities for me to do some supervised checks via Zoom of other translations as part of my training. Pray that my ideas and the way I suggest them will be helpful for improving the translation, and that they will be good learning experiences.