Linguistic Gap Analysis — 1 Samuel (English → Bengali)

Purpose and Scope

This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 for the 1 Samuel curriculum. It identifies where standard Bengali vocabulary is missing, inadequate, or dangerously crowded by competing religious semantic fields (Hindu, Muslim, and Bengali folk-religious usage), and recommends a translation strategy for each doctrine-load-bearing term. It covers the full book, 1 Samuel 1–31, with the core passage (16:1–13 — God’s sovereign choice and anointing of David) treated as the theological anchor, not the boundary of analysis. It extends, and must never contradict, the Romans baseline language package and the term decisions already logged in 08_core_glossary.md and the updated bible_term_registry.json.

Seven curriculum doctrines govern this analysis:

1. The Transition from Judges to Monarchy
2. God’s Sovereign Choice of David
3. Obedience versus Sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22)
4. The Danger of Rejecting God as King
5. Faith versus Fear (David and Goliath)
6. The Anointed King as a Type of the Messiah
7. Samuel’s Role as Prophet and Judge

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each doctrine: the Bengali terms currently available, their specific weaknesses, and the recommended handling strategy (lexical choice, fencing note, transliteration, or paraphrase).

1.1 The Transition from Judges to Monarchy

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
রাজা (king), বিচারক (judge), রাজ্য (kingdom)	রাজা is lexically neutral but sits inside a very active regional semantic field of divinely-descended, hereditary Hindu rajahship (rajahs, rajbari, “রাজা” in Bengali folklore as a demi-sacred figure) that could import an unwanted theology of innate royal sanctity. বিচারক defaults to a narrow “courtroom judge” sense in modern usage, losing the combined judicial-military-charismatic office of the shophet.	Retain রাজা and বিচারক (already established, low lexical-substitution risk) but mandate a fencing teaching note at every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence (ch. 8, 12) clarifying: (a) Israel’s king rules under YHWH’s delegated, conditional authority, not by inherent divine descent; (b) the judge’s office was Spirit-raised and non-dynastic, structurally different from the monarchy that replaces it. No lexical gap exists; the gap is conceptual/associative and must be closed by framing, not new vocabulary.
ঈশ্বরের রাজ্য (Kingdom of God, baseline)	Available and reusable for typological forward-reference (Israel’s failed and partial kingship anticipating God’s true reign), but must not be introduced prematurely into 1 Samuel narrative material where the referent is a strictly human institution.	Reserve ঈশ্বরের রাজ্য strictly for explicit typological/summary commentary; never substitute for রাজ্য (Israel’s kingdom) in narrative translation itself.

1.2 God’s Sovereign Choice of David

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
মনোনীত করা (choose/elect), হৃদয় (heart), মনোনীত করেছি (provided/selected)	মনোনীত করা correctly reuses the baseline’s election vocabulary root and avoids karma/fate vocabulary — no gap here. হৃদয়, however, is a crowded neighborhood: in everyday and devotional Bengali (including Vaishnav bhakti poetry and popular film/song idiom), হৃদয় is heavily weighted toward romantic or sentimental feeling, risking a reading of 16:7 (“the LORD looks on the heart”) as “God looks for an emotionally sincere or lovable person” rather than the Hebrew’s holistic inner-person sense (mind, will, moral character).	Keep হৃদয় (no better single-word alternative exists — অন্তর is a possible synonym but is equally emotion-skewed, and মন skews toward “mind” narrowly, losing moral-character weight). Fence with a mandatory glossing clause in the translated text or margin at 16:7: “হৃদয় (অর্থাৎ, ভেতরের সম্পূর্ণ মানুষ — চিন্তা, ইচ্ছা ও চরিত্র)” — “heart (that is, the whole inner person — thought, will, and character).” This is a paraphrase-support strategy layered onto the retained lexical term, not a lexical substitution.
রাখা / বেছে নেওয়া (informal “pick, choose”)	Too casual/transactional for a sovereign, unilateral divine act; risks reducing election to a shopping-style preference.	Rejected. Retain মনোনীত করা exclusively for this doctrine.

1.3 Obedience versus Sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22)

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
বাধ্যতা / বাধ্য হওয়া (obedience), বলিদান/বলি (sacrifice), হোমবলি (burnt offering)	বাধ্যতা alone can register in modern Bengali as mere external compliance or coercion (“legally bound to”), understating the covenant-loyalty sense of שָׁמַע (shama, “to hear-and-do”). বলি/বলিদান is the single most acute crowded-neighborhood term in the entire book (see §3 below) — it is the identical, ordinary Bengali word for animal sacrifice offered to Kali and Durga, an intensely visible living practice centered at Kalighat and during Durga Puja.	Retain বাধ্যতা but favor compound phrasing echoing the baseline’s established বিশ্বাসের বাধ্যতা root (“obedience of/from faith”) in doctrinal commentary framing 15:22, to keep the covenant-loyalty sense active rather than bare compliance. For বলি/বলিদান: no lexical substitution is possible or advisable — this is the correct, established Bengali Bible term, and any invented alternative would create a worse problem (an unfamiliar, seemingly evasive neologism). The strategy is mandatory contextual fencing: every occurrence of বলি/বলিদান/হোমবলি in teaching material accompanying 15:22 must explicitly state that the OT sacrificial system anticipated Christ’s once-for-all self-offering and was never a mechanism for appeasing an capricious deity — directly countering the transactional-appeasement logic of the regional Kali-worship association.
সমূলে বিনষ্ট করা (utterly destroy, cherem)	No true one-word Bengali equivalent for the unique OT legal category of חָרַם (cherem/the ban); the phrase is a constructed paraphrase, not an established term.	Accept the paraphrase সমূলে বিনষ্ট করা as the best available rendering (already logged in the glossary). Mandatory doctrinal fencing note at every occurrence: this is a bounded, historically-specific, prophetically-authorized act of covenant-war judgment against Amalek specifically, not a transferable warfare ethic — critical given the audience’s lived experience of communal violence in South Asian history.
সদাপ্রভু অনুতপ্ত হলেন (the LORD regretted)	English “regretted/relented” and Bengali অনুতপ্ত হওয়া both carry an everyday sense of “repented of a moral fault,” risking a reading that God sinned or was mistaken.	Fence with mandatory anthropopathism note distinguishing this from human moral repentance (see §1.7’s শুভ turn) and from 15:29’s explicit denial that YHWH “lies or has regret” in that sense — the two occurrences must be read together, not in isolation.

1.4 The Danger of Rejecting God as King

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
প্রত্যাখ্যান করা (rejected), দুষ্ট আত্মা (evil spirit), প্রতিমা (idol)	প্রত্যাখ্যান করা is precise and carries adequate forensic weight — no gap. দুষ্ট আত্মা risks collapsing into generic Bengali folk বাংলা ভূত/জিন-possession narrative (a very active folk category across both Hindu and Muslim rural Bengal) if left unglossed, obscuring that this is a specific, judicial act of divine permission rather than free-roaming demonic attack or ancestral-spirit affliction. প্রতিমা is the single most visually loaded term in the book (see §3).	দুষ্ট আত্মা: mandatory fencing note at every occurrence (16:14; 18:10; 19:9) stating God’s sovereignty is permissive/judicial here, not authorial of evil, and distinguishing this from folk exorcism narratives readers may know first-hand. প্রতিমা: retain (already established, no viable substitute — মূর্তি carries an identical association), and frame Dagon’s fall (ch. 5) strictly as a polemic against the impotence of any rival object of worship before the living God, never as a generalized attack on Bengali Hindu neighbors’ devotional images.
প্রেতমাধ্যম (medium/necromancer)	Directly names a living, practiced folk category (consultation of ওঝা, গুণিন, and tantric spirit-mediums for guidance from the dead or from spirits) still active in both Bangladesh and West Bengal, cutting across religious-community lines.	No lexical alternative reduces the risk — the term must name the real thing. Strategy is pastoral fencing, not lexical avoidance: frame ch. 28 as the narrative and theological low point of Saul’s decline (seeking guidance apart from God’s ordained means, after having himself banned this very practice), not as ridicule of a practice some readers’ own families may still engage in.

1.5 Faith versus Fear (David and Goliath)

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
বিশ্বাস (faith/trust), ঈশ্বরের সামর্থ্য (power of God), অচ্ছিন্নত্বক (uncircumcised)	বিশ্বাস and ঈশ্বরের সামর্থ্য reuse baseline terms exactly and carry no new gap; the risk is enforcement (never substituting শক্তি for God’s power given ch. 17’s ironic reversal of Goliath’s boasted physical শক্তি/might). অচ্ছিন্নত্বক is the acute gap here: it names Goliath’s covenant-outsider status via a taunt-epithet, but circumcision (খতনা) is a positively-regarded, actively practiced identity and religious-purity marker for Bengali Muslim readers, so an unglossed taunt risks landing as a slur against present-day uncircumcised or circumcised identity rather than as historical Abrahamic-covenant polemic.	বিশ্বাস/ঈশ্বরের সামর্থ্য: enforce baseline forbidden-substitution rule with special vigilance in ch. 17 (শক্তি explicitly forbidden). অচ্ছিন্নত্বক: retain the accurate technical rendering but mandate a historical-background fencing note (Genesis 17’s covenant sign) at every occurrence, explicitly separating the ancient narrative polemic from any present-day religious-identity comparison.
সদাপ্রভুর ভয় (fear/reverential awe of the LORD) vs. human fear of the enemy	Bengali ভয় is a single general-purpose fear word; it does not lexically distinguish servile terror from reverential awe the way Hebrew יִרְאָה is theologically nuanced to do.	No dedicated reverential-awe term exists in common Bengali distinct from ordinary fear vocabulary. Strategy: retain সদাপ্রভুর ভয় as a fixed compound (the covenant-name modifier does the disambiguating work) and use plain ভয় for Israel’s/Saul’s fear of Goliath, letting the narrative contrast (12 vs. 17) carry the theological point, reinforced by a teaching note in ch. 17 explicitly naming “faith versus fear” as the chapter’s structuring contrast.

1.6 The Anointed King as a Type of the Messiah

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
অভিষেক করা (anoint), সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি (the LORD’s anointed), খ্রীষ্ট (baseline: Christ), মশীহ (baseline: rejected Islamic-idiom term)	This is the single highest-stakes typological gap in the book. Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (mashiach) is the direct root of “Messiah/Christ,” but the baseline’s খ্রীষ্ট is reserved exclusively for Jesus’s NT fulfillment; using খ্রীষ্ট of Saul or David in 1 Samuel would wrongly collapse type into fulfillment. Conversely, মশীহ (the Islamic-idiom transliteration) is explicitly rejected by the baseline for Christological reasons and carries an entirely different, non-crucified, non-divine Isa-Christology if used here. Bengali therefore has no existing single word that names “an OT anointed office-holder, typologically pointing toward, but not identical to, the Messiah.”	This is a genuine vocabulary gap, not merely a crowded neighborhood — resolved by the constructed compound phrase সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি (“the LORD’s anointed one”), already fixed in the registry. Mandatory typological fencing note at every occurrence (16:6; 24:6,10; 26:9,11,16,23): this title names the OT office-holder (Saul, then David) as a real historical king and, secondarily, a forward-pointing type; it must never be silently exchanged for খ্রীষ্ট, and মশীহ must never be substituted regardless of translator familiarity with that word from general Bengali usage.
মেষপালক (shepherd)	No lexical gap; the term is stable. The risk is purely under-exploitation of the typology — a competent but theologically thin rendering if left unglossed.	Add a forward-linking teaching note at 16:11 connecting David’s shepherd origin to the Shepherd-King fulfilled in Christ (John 10; Psalm 23), without altering the lexical choice.

1.7 Samuel’s Role as Prophet and Judge

Available Bengali Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
ভাববাদী (prophet), দর্শী (seer), বিচারক (judge), ঈশ্বরের লোক (man of God), সদাপ্রভুর বাক্য (word of the LORD)	ভাববাদী and ভাববাণী reuse the baseline exactly — no gap. দর্শী is a genuine but low-risk synonym-gap (a less common word requiring a co-occurring gloss with ভাববাদী at its single occurrence, ch. 9). ঈশ্বরের লোক deliberately avoids সাধু (already rejected by baseline for “saints,” carrying Hindu/Jain ascetic-renunciate imagery) — correctly resolved, no further gap.	No new lexical action required beyond what the glossary already fixes; primary residual risk is that বিচারক (judge) alone, without the fencing note specified in §1.1, will read as a narrower office than Samuel’s actual combined judicial-prophetic-priestly role — reinforce the same fencing note wherever ch. 7’s summary of Samuel’s lifelong judgeship occurs.
সদাপ্রভুর দিকে হৃদয়ে ফেরা (human return/repent, shuv) vs. সদাপ্রভু অনুতপ্ত হলেন (divine “regret,” nicham)	These are two distinct Hebrew roots that an unglossed Bengali reader could easily conflate, since both surface as some form of turning/change-of-heart language in English translation traditions.	Mandatory cross-reference note wherever either term occurs (7:3 for human শুভ-repentance; 15:11, 35 for the divine anthropopathism) explicitly stating they are different Hebrew concepts and must not be read as parallel: humans turn back from sin; God does not “repent of sin” in that sense.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate single Bengali term exists)

Concept	Gap Type	Resolution
מְשִׁיחַ יהוה (the LORD’s anointed, OT typological office)	No existing word names “anointed office-holder pointing toward but distinct from Messiah”	Constructed compound সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি + mandatory typological note (see §1.6)
חָרַם (cherem, the ban/utter destruction)	No word for this unique, legally bounded OT category of holy-war judgment	Constructed paraphrase সমূলে বিনষ্ট করা + mandatory scope-limiting note (see §1.3)
שֹׁפֵט as combined office (judge = deliverer + military leader + spiritual authority)	বিচারক names only the judicial function of the historical office	Retain বিচারক + mandatory office-description note at every doctrinally significant occurrence
Reverential יִרְאָה vs. servile fear	Bengali ভয় is undifferentiated	Fixed compound সদাপ্রভুর ভয় to carry the reverential sense by construction; plain ভয় elsewhere
הֵבִיא/רָאָה idiom “to see” = “to select with foresight” (16:1) echoing 16:7’s “the LORD sees the heart”	No Bengali idiom naturally reproduces this wordplay	Accept loss of wordplay in running text; recommend a translator’s footnote at 16:1 pointing forward to 16:7’s echo for teaching purposes

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (adequate Bengali term exists, but shares a lexical field with a non-Christian religious practice or figure)

These require fencing (contextual/teaching notes), not lexical substitution, because the existing term is the correct, established rendering and any invented alternative would create greater confusion:

Bengali Term	Competing Association	Fencing Requirement
বলি / বলিদান (sacrifice)	Kali/Durga animal sacrifice (Kalighat, Durga Puja) — highest-frequency collision term in the book	Explicit note at every occurrence in chs. 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16 that OT sacrifice anticipates Christ’s once-for-all offering, not ritual appeasement of an unpredictable deity
হোম / হোমবলি (burnt offering)	Vedic/Hindu homa fire-ritual	Note distinguishing God-commanded, covenant-specific OT offering from Vedic domestic/temple fire-worship
প্রতিমা (idol/image, Dagon)	Durga protima and other worshipped Hindu deity images	Frame strictly as a polemic against the impotence of any rival object of worship before the living God; never a generalized critique of Hindu neighbors’ devotional images
প্রেতমাধ্যম (medium/necromancer, ch. 28)	ওঝা, গুণিন, tantric spirit-consultation — an actively practiced folk custom in both Bangladesh and West Bengal	Pastoral framing as critique of seeking guidance apart from God’s ordained means, not ridicule of readers’ possible family practices
মানত / ব্রত (rejected alternatives for “vow”)	Shrine-vow to a pir; Hindu ritual observance-vow	Excluded from translation memory; use প্রতিজ্ঞা exclusively to avoid recasting Hannah’s vow as transactional bargaining
রাজা (king)	Regional folk/historical rajah imagery of quasi-sacred, hereditary divine kingship	Note that Israel’s king reigns under YHWH’s delegated, conditional authority, not innate divine descent
দুষ্ট আত্মা (evil spirit)	Generic ভূত/জিন-possession folk narrative	Note that God’s role is judicial/permissive, not authorial of evil; distinguish from folk possession-exorcism lore
অচ্ছিন্নত্বক (uncircumcised)	Positively-regarded খতনা identity marker in Bengali Muslim practice	Historical Genesis 17 background note at every occurrence; never a present-day identity comparison
হৃদয় (heart)	Romantic/sentimental Bengali literary and devotional usage	Glossing clause at 16:7 clarifying “whole inner person,” not feeling alone
ঈশ্বর vs. সদাপ্রভু	ঈশ্বর’s Vedantic Ishvara root (already noted in baseline) is a low residual risk since Bengali Bible tradition has stabilized it; সদাপ্রভু’s distinctness must be maintained so the covenant-name/generic-deity distinction pervasive in 1 Samuel is not lost	Enforce სদাপ্রভু strictly wherever the Hebrew text has YHWH; never flatten to ঈশ্বর even in narrative summary

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
এফোদ (ephod)	Transliterate	No functional Bengali equivalent for this specific priestly garment/technical cultic object; established Bible convention; low doctrinal risk (Low tier) merits a light touch — transliteration plus a brief explanatory note is sufficient.
আব্বা-style retained transliterations (n/a directly in 1 Samuel, but principle carries over)	Transliterate proper names and technical cultic nouns only	Consistent with the baseline’s approach to Abba: retain foreign/technical terms as transliterations only when no functional native equivalent exists and the term is doctrinally significant as a fixed reference point.
সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি (the LORD’s anointed)	Paraphrase (compound phrase), not transliteration	Transliterating מָשִׁיחַ as মশীহ is explicitly forbidden by the baseline (Islamic-idiom collision); a Bengali compound descriptive phrase is the only safe path, even at the cost of brevity.
সমূলে বিনষ্ট করা (cherem)	Paraphrase, not transliteration	Transliterating “cherem” (হারাম-sounding to Bengali ears, unfortunately near-homophonous with the Arabic-Islamic loanword হারাম, “forbidden/sinful”) would introduce a severe false-cognate risk. A descriptive Bengali paraphrase is mandatory; the near-homophone risk with হারাম must be flagged explicitly for translators and voice-recording talent to avoid any accidental phonetic echo in audio materials.
প্রেতমাধ্যম (medium/necromancer)	Paraphrase using existing compound vocabulary, not transliteration of “necromancer” or “medium”	An English loanword transliteration (e.g., “মিডিয়াম”) would be unintelligible and register as a modern communications-media term; the existing Bengali compound accurately names the practice using vocabulary the audience already recognizes from folk-religious life.
ইখাবোদ / Ichabod (proper name, ch. 4)	Transliterate as proper name (ঈখাবোদ) with mandatory gloss	Proper name meaning “no glory,” theologically load-bearing at the moment of the ark’s capture; transliterate per Bengali Bible convention and append a bracketed gloss (“অর্থাৎ, ‘মহিমা নেই’”) at first occurrence, consistent with the established treatment of other meaningful Hebrew proper names in Bengali Bible tradition.
দায়ূদ, ইস্রায়েল, ফিলিস্তীয়, সদাপ্রভু, ঈশ্বর, ভাববাদী	Established forms — carry forward unchanged	Already fixed by baseline/registry; no new transliteration vs. paraphrase decision required.

General principle applied: transliterate only (a) proper names, and (b) technical cultic nouns with no living functional Bengali equivalent and low doctrinal stakes (ephod). Paraphrase (constructed Bengali compound) is preferred wherever a single transliterated loanword would either (i) collide with an existing, differently-freighted Bengali or Perso-Arabic word (cherem/হারাম; mashiach/মশীহ), or (ii) fail to communicate at all to a reader without specialist background (necromancer, cherem).

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of misreading given the Bengali religious landscape). All items ranked Critical or High require human theologian review per the doctrine risk registry conventions; native-speaker review is noted where applicable.

Rank	Ambiguity	Doctrine(s) Affected	Why It Ranks Here	Risk Tier
1	সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি could drift toward either খ্রীষ্ট (collapsing type into fulfillment) or মশীহ (importing Islamic non-divine, non-crucified Christology) if translators default to familiar vocabulary under time pressure	The Anointed King as a Type of the Messiah; God’s Sovereign Choice of David	Highest doctrinal centrality in the curriculum (core passage 16:6, 13) combined with two live, well-known “easier” substitution words in the translator’s own working vocabulary	Critical
2	বলি/বলিদান unglossed reads as generic ritual appeasement of a deity, exactly the theology 15:22 and the whole sacrificial-system typology exist to overturn	Obedience versus Sacrifice	Highest-frequency collision term in the book (8+ chapters); the doctrine’s central verse (15:22) is precisely a polemic against transactional-ritual religion, making an unglossed rendering self-defeating	Critical
3	সদাপ্রভু অনুতপ্ত হলেন (15:11, 35) misread as God sinning, erring, or lacking foreknowledge, undermining divine immutability that underlies the baseline’s Assurance of Salvation doctrine	Danger of Rejecting God as King; (undergirds Providence)	Directly touches the doctrine of God’s unchanging character; a single unglossed anthropopathism can destabilize a reader’s entire concept of God’s reliability	Critical
4	সমূলে বিনষ্ট করা (cherem, ch. 15) read as a transferable general warfare ethic, or accidentally echoing হারাম phonetically in spoken/audio delivery	Obedience versus Sacrifice	Acute real-world sensitivity given South Asian communal-violence history; compounded by an unfortunate near-homophone risk unique to Bengali	Critical
5	হৃদয় (16:7) narrowed to romantic/emotional sincerity rather than the whole inner person (mind, will, character)	God’s Sovereign Choice of David	Occurs in the core passage’s single most quoted verse (“man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart”); a narrowed reading changes the entire point of David’s election	High
6	প্রতিমা (idol, Dagon, ch. 5) read as polemic against Hindu neighbors’ devotional images rather than against any false object of worship generally	Danger of Rejecting God as King	High potential for real interfaith social friction if mistaught; requires deliberate reframing every time it is taught, not just translated	Critical
7	প্রেতমাধ্যম (medium, ch. 28) taught with ridicule toward a practice still active in readers’ own extended families or communities	Danger of Rejecting God as King	Pastoral/social sensitivity risk is high even though the lexical choice itself is correct and unavoidable	Critical
8	অচ্ছিন্নত্বক (uncircumcised, ch. 17) misheard as a taunt against present-day uncircumcised identity rather than the specific ancient Abrahamic-covenant polemic against Goliath	Faith versus Fear	Direct risk of offense to Muslim-background readers if the historical framing note is omitted	High
9	দুষ্ট আত্মা (evil spirit, 16:14; 18:10; 19:9) read through a folk bhoot/jinn-possession lens, implying either a competing evil power rivaling God or a literal possession narrative disconnected from Saul’s judicial disobedience	Danger of Rejecting God as King	Risk of both theological confusion (dualism) and cultural over-familiarity (folk exorcism framing) simultaneously	Critical
10	সদাপ্রভুর দিকে হৃদয়ে ফেরা (human shuv-repentance, 7:3) conflated with সদাপ্রভু অনুতপ্ত হলেন (divine nicham, ch. 15) because both surface in English translation traditions with “turn/repent” vocabulary	supports Obedience versus Sacrifice; Samuel’s Role as Prophet and Judge	Lower doctrinal centrality than items above but a genuine, easily-missed conflation risk across the whole book	High
11	রাজা/রাজ্য read against regional divinely-descended-rajah cultural background rather than as conditional, delegated theocratic kingship	Transition from Judges to Monarchy	Pervasive throughout chs. 8–31; cumulative rather than acute risk, since no single verse carries the whole weight	High
12	বিচারক (judge, chs. 7–8) narrowed to a courtroom-only office, losing Samuel’s combined judicial-military-prophetic role	Samuel’s Role as Prophet and Judge; Transition from Judges to Monarchy	Affects reader’s grasp of why the office was replaced by kingship, but doctrinally recoverable through surrounding narrative context even if unglossed	Medium (Native speaker review sufficient)

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5. Summary and Handoff

• No new Critical-risk lexical substitutions are recommended beyond what 08_core_glossary.md and the updated bible_term_registry.json already fix. This analysis confirms those choices and adds the fencing/note requirements needed to make them safe in actual teaching use.
• The dominant risk pattern in 1 Samuel is not missing vocabulary but crowded semantic neighborhoods — established, correct Bengali Bible terms (বলি, প্রতিমা, প্রেতমাধ্যম, রাজা) that collide with highly visible, currently-practiced Hindu, folk-religious, or Muslim cultural referents. The consistent resolution strategy is contextual/teaching-note fencing, not lexical avoidance, because avoidance would either be linguistically impossible (no synonym escapes the association) or would produce a more confusing, artificial-sounding text.
• The one genuine vocabulary gap requiring a constructed phrase rather than a single word is মশীহ/খ্রীষ্ট’s typological predecessor, resolved as সদাপ্রভুর অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি — this is the single highest-priority term for theologian review given its centrality to the core passage and its proximity to two tempting but doctrinally incompatible substitution words already fluent in the translator’s vocabulary.
• All items ranked Critical or High above must be carried forward into doctrine_risk_registry.json and translation_memory.json updates for 1 Samuel with mandatory translator-note fields, following the same enforcement discipline the Romans baseline established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.

This document must be loaded alongside 08_core_glossary.md before any Phase 2 segment translation of 1 Samuel begins.