Linguistic Gap Analysis: Micah (Full Book, Chapters 1–7)

1. Purpose and Method

This analysis identifies where Bengali’s existing theological vocabulary is adequate, where it is absent, and where it is dangerously “crowded” — i.e., already occupied by terms with strong prior meaning in Bengali Hindu (Shakta/Vaishnav/Vedantic) or Bengali Muslim (Sunni-idiom) religious registers. It extends, and must not contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json, and it is the working basis for the Core Glossary (08_core_glossary.md) already drafted for this curriculum. Every recommendation below is cross-checked against that glossary for consistency; where this document adds reasoning not spelled out there, it supplies the gap-analysis rationale that justifies the glossary’s choices.

Method: for each of the five curriculum doctrines, we (a) inventory the Bengali terms realistically available, (b) name the specific weakness of each candidate, and (c) commit to one recommended strategy (reuse baseline, coin new compound, transliterate + gloss, or fence an existing word with a mandatory translator note). Coverage spans Micah 1–7 in full; chapters that contribute no new terminology to a doctrine are explicitly marked “reviewed — no new terms” rather than omitted.

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2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

2.1 True Worship versus Empty Ritual

Available Bengali term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
প্রতিমা / মূর্তি (idol)	Identical vocabulary to the consecrated image at the center of Bengali Hindu devotional life (Durga Puja, household পূজা). Using it without framing risks readers hearing an attack on neighbors’ religious objects rather than on Israel’s own historic syncretism.	Fence, don’t avoid. Retain প্রতিমা/মূর্তি (no viable substitute exists) but require a translator note at first occurrence (Micah 1:7) anchoring the polemic in Israel’s covenant-breach history, not a general critique of Bengali religious practice.
হোম / হোমবলি (burnt offering)	হোম is the live, currently-practiced Hindu/Vedic fire-sacrifice term (yajna/homa) — repeated, priest-mediated, merit-generating. Micah 6:6 uses the semantically adjacent OT category (olah) to make the opposite theological point: ritual sacrifice, even correctly performed, cannot substitute for obedience.	Fence with mandatory note. Use হোমবলি (already extending baseline sacrificial vocabulary patterns) but flag every core-passage occurrence with a note that Micah relativizes his own tradition’s ritual system, not Hindu ritual by association. Do not let the note read as a swipe at Hindu practice.
উচ্চস্থান (high place)	Bare literal rendering (“high place”) is theologically opaque to a Bengali reader with no OT narrative literacy — could be misread as merely a geographic feature.	Descriptive gloss required. Pair with a short apposition (“পাহাড়ের উপরে অবস্থিত পূজাস্থান” / “elevated worship-shrine”) on first use per lesson unit.
ঈশ্বর, সদাপ্রভু	Baseline term ঈশ্বর (Elohim) is stable; but Micah’s rhetorical force in this doctrine depends on distinguishing the covenant LORD who brings the charge from generic deity-language.	Reuse baseline + new OT-specific term. ঈশ্বর reused exactly; সদাপ্রভু (YHWH) newly registered (see §4 below) to preserve this distinction, which the NT-only baseline never needed to make explicit.
ন্যায়বিচার, দয়া, নম্র (justice/mercy/humility — the positive contrast to ritual)	No inherent weakness; these are new-to-this-curriculum but lexically native Bengali moral vocabulary. Risk is not in availability but in proportion: a translator could over-elaborate the ritual vocabulary (exotic, needs footnotes) and under-elaborate the positive triad (feels “plain”), inverting Micah’s own rhetorical weighting.	Preserve rhetorical balance. Ensure Micah 6:6-8’s escalating structure (sacrifice question → intensifying hypotheticals → the three positive requirements) is not flattened; the three requirements must land with full weight, not as an anticlimactic “simple” answer after elaborate ritual description.

2.2 Justice, Mercy, and Humility (core passage, Micah 6:8)

Available Bengali term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ন্যায়বিচার (mishpat, justice)	Bengali also has ন্যায় (abstract “rightness/logic,” used in Nyaya philosophy) and বিচার (generic “judgment/trial”). ন্যায়বিচার the compound is safe, but there is real risk of confusion with the baseline’s ধার্মিকতা (Critical, forensic righteousness before God).	Fence: hard distinction required. Every occurrence near ধার্মিকতা-family vocabulary (e.g., Micah 6:5’s “righteous acts of the LORD”) needs a note: mishpat is doing right by others in society; ধার্মিকতা is being declared right before God. Collapsing them would blur the very distinction the core passage depends on.
দয়া (chesed, “love mercy”)	দয়া alone can register as generic pity/kindness (দয়া করো = “please,” a common polite request in everyday Bengali), understating chesed’s covenant-loyalty depth. অনুগ্রহ (baseline “grace”) is already reserved for unmerited saving favor and must not be reused here. করুণা risks Buddhist compassion-doctrine associations (see §4).	Coin as phrase, fence with note. দয়াকে ভালোবাসা (“to love mercy/kindness”) as a bound phrase, not a single noun, to slow the reader down from the reflexive “please”-register reading; recurring translator note on chesed’s covenant depth at 6:8, 7:18, 7:20.
নম্রভাবে চলা (walk humbly)	নম্র/বিনয় vocabulary overlaps with Hindu bhakti devotional self-abasement (বিনয়, often caste-coded — a lower-status devotee’s posture before a deity or guru) and with Sufi-inflected ascetic self-effacement. Neither captures Micah’s sense of ongoing relational fidelity while remaining socially engaged in justice work.	Fence with note; avoid বিনয়. Use চলা (“to walk/live,” the ordinary verb for conduct of life) rather than a noun for “humility” alone, to keep the durative, lived-out sense; explicit note distinguishing this from ascetic withdrawal or caste-coded devotional postures.
তিনটি সমান্তরাল আদেশ (the three parallel commands’ syntax)	Not a vocabulary gap but a structural one: Bengali subordinate-clause tendencies could accidentally rank the three infinitives (e.g., rendering “walk humbly” as a subordinate manner-clause modifying “do justice”), collapsing Micah’s rhetorically flat, three-beat parallelism.	Syntax directive, not lexical fix. Require three independent, equally weighted verbal clauses in translation, matching Hebrew’s grammatical parallelism; flag any Phase 2 draft that subordinates one clause to another for native-speaker structural review.

2.3 The Coming Ruler from Bethlehem

Available Bengali term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
শাসক (ruler)	Ordinary, low-marked Bengali word for any governing figure (a district administrator can be called শাসক). On its own it carries no messianic freight, risking a purely political reading of Micah 5:2 that misses the verse Matthew 2:6 identifies as messianic prophecy.	Reuse as baseline-pattern extension, teaching-note gated. No better lexical option exists (a manufactured neologism would be worse — opaque). Compensate entirely through teaching apparatus: mandatory cross-reference note to Matthew 2:6 and to the baseline’s “messiah” (খ্রীষ্ট) and “lordship_of_christ” (প্রভু) entries at every occurrence.
অনাদিকাল থেকে (from everlasting/from of old)	Highest-risk phrase in the entire book. অনাদি is a load-bearing term in Hindu Vedantic philosophy describing Brahman’s beginningless, impersonal eternity — a First Principle, not a person. Micah 5:2 is read by Christian doctrine as pointing to the coming ruler’s personal, unique eternal pre-existence — nearly the opposite metaphysical shape (impersonal Absolute vs. personal divine Son).	Mandatory theologian-gated fencing at every occurrence. No substitute avoids the collision (any “beginningless” vocabulary in Bengali draws on the same philosophical register). Retain অনাদিকাল থেকে but require: (1) a translator note at first occurrence distinguishing personal eternal pre-existence from an impersonal First Principle; (2) human theologian sign-off before this passage is finalized in any lesson material; (3) cross-link to baseline “incarnation” (দেহধারণ) so learners see the same eternal-Son logic already established in Romans-based teaching.
বৈৎলেহম ইফ্রাথা (Bethlehem Ephrathah)	Low ambiguity as a place-name, but low OT narrative literacy among both West Bengal and Bangladesh audiences means the town’s smallness/insignificance (rhetorically central to 5:2’s irony) may not register without added context.	Retain established proper-name form; add narrative-context gloss (“যিহূদার একটি ক্ষুদ্র নগর,” “a small town of Judah”) rather than a lexical fix.
পালন করা / পালক (shepherd)	Bengali পালক primarily denotes an ordinary occupational herdsman/keeper in contemporary usage; the Ancient Near Eastern royal-shepherd metaphor (king as shepherd of his people) is not automatically activated for a modern Bengali reader.	Retain term; supply teaching note linking to the royal-shepherd background and forward to John 10 / 1 Peter 5 for future NT curricula, ensuring consistent handling across the wider tri-bible.ai library.
শান্তি (peace)	No weakness; exact baseline reuse.	Reuse baseline exactly, no new note needed beyond the existing peace_with_god cross-reference.

2.4 Judgment on Corrupt Leaders

Available Bengali term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
নেতা / প্রধান শাসকগণ (leaders/heads/rulers)	Generic terms risk softening into “important people” or “officials” without the specific covenant-accountability charge Micah levels at named categories (heads, judges, priests, prophets).	Fence: require category-specificity. Where the Hebrew names a specific office (judge, priest, prophet), the Bengali must name that specific office rather than defaulting to the generic নেতা.
অত্যাচার করা / শোষণ করা (oppress)	Two available verbs split the semantic field: অত্যাচার leans toward physical/violent cruelty, শোষণ toward structural/economic exploitation. Micah 2:2; 3:1-3 need both senses (land-seizure plus violent enforcement).	Use both, contextually, not interchangeably. শোষণ করা for the economic land/wage exploitation passages (2:2), অত্যাচার করা where physical violence against persons is in view (3:1-3); do not substitute one for the other by convenience.
গণক / জ্যোতিষী (diviner)	Already fenced by the baseline’s existing ভাববাদী-vs-জ্যোতিষী contrast (true prophet vs. fortune-teller). No new weakness.	Reuse established baseline contrast exactly.
মিথ্যা ভাববাদী (false prophet)	Risk is not lexical but pastoral: Bengali evangelical and charismatic circles have their own live tension around prosperity-preaching, so this term lands with unusually sharp contemporary application.	Retain literal rendering; flag for native-speaker sensitivity review, not because the Bengali is unclear but because contemporary application in teaching notes needs care.
প্রতারণাপূর্ণ দাঁড়িপাল্লা (dishonest scales) / সহিংসতা (violence)	No significant weakness; concrete, low-ambiguity images with natural Bengali commercial and legal vocabulary.	Reuse as drafted; no fencing required.

2.5 Hope of Restoration and Forgiveness

Available Bengali term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
অবশিষ্টাংশ (remnant)	Literally “leftover portion” — without theological framing this can read as a demographic afterthought (“what’s left over”) rather than a covenant-hope category with its own promise attached.	Fence with note. Require a note tying অবশিষ্টাংশ to the same remnant theology already implicit in the baseline’s Romans 9–11 “election”/“providence” entries, so the term is read forward into NT fulfillment, not as mere survivor-counting.
উদ্ধার করা (redeem, ga’al/padah)	Direct collision risk: Bengali’s most natural “liberation” vocabulary (মুক্তি and derivatives) is the baseline’s explicitly forbidden term for salvation (Hindu moksha/rebirth-cycle association). A translator defaulting to natural idiom for “redeem” could easily reach for a মুক্তি-family word.	Hard-fence: never a মুক্তি-derivative. উদ্ধার করা (“rescue/deliver”) is the only acceptable rendering for both Hebrew roots (ga’al, padah) throughout Micah; this must be enforced as strictly as the baseline’s salvation-term prohibition, since it is functionally the same collision.
অপরাধ ক্ষমা করা (pardoning iniquity) / বিদ্রোহ উপেক্ষা করে ক্ষমা করা (passing over transgression)	Risk of conflation with the baseline’s Critical “justification” entry (ধার্মিক বলে গণ্য হওয়া, a forensic legal declaration). Micah 7:18-19 describes God graciously lifting away/overlooking guilt — a related but distinct action from a courtroom declaration of righteous status.	Fence: keep conceptually separate in teaching notes. Do not present Micah 7:18 as a restatement of Romans-style justification; it is the OT root-experience of forgiveness that justification later formalizes doctrinally, but the vocabulary must not be merged.
পাপ / বিদ্রোহ / অপরাধ (the three sin-terms: chattat/pesha/avon)	Bengali has no natural three-way lexical split matching Hebrew’s three near-synonyms for wrongdoing; left unmanaged, a translator would likely default to পাপ for all three, flattening Micah 7:18-19’s rhetorical build.	Assign and lock one Bengali term per Hebrew root for the whole book: পাপ = chattat, বিদ্রোহ = pesha, অপরাধ = avon. Never allow interchange once assigned.
করুণা (compassion, racham)	করুণা is the central term of Buddhist compassion doctrine (karuna, a Brahma-vihara virtue) and colloquially just means “pity.” Neither fully carries racham’s visceral, covenant-relational, quasi-parental warmth.	Fence with note, but retain করুণা — no better single Bengali word exists; note must distinguish God’s personal, relational compassion from a generalized meditative-compassion ideal.
শপথ করা / নিয়ম (oath / covenant)	No new weakness beyond the baseline’s existing নিয়ম entry; শপথ করা (oath) is new to this curriculum but standard, unambiguous Bengali legal/relational vocabulary.	Reuse নিয়ম exactly per baseline; register শপথ করা as new but low-risk.
তোমার মতো ঈশ্বর আর কে আছেন? (Who is a God like you?)	The incomparability claim risks two opposite mishearings: in Hindu-majority contexts, as “best among many gods” (polytheistic frame); in Muslim-majority contexts, as an unremarkable tawhid-affirming rhetorical question that could be co-opted to argue against Christ’s deity.	Fence with a doctrine-specific teaching note clarifying this affirms the singular, incomparable, personal God of Israel — not a comparative “best of many” claim, and not usable as an anti-Trinitarian proof text. Route for human theologian review given the doctrinal stakes on both fronts.

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3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

3.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no existing Bengali lexeme; coinage/compounding required)

Concept	Gap	Resolution
Covenant lawsuit genre (rîv)	Bengali has no single word for this specific Ancient Near Eastern legal-covenantal literary form (God as covenant Lord filing formal charges against his own people through summoned cosmic witnesses).	Compound phrase সদাপ্রভুর অভিযোগ (“the LORD’s formal charge/complaint”) plus a mandatory genre-explaining note at first occurrence (Micah 6:1-2), since no native Bengali legal or literary category matches it precisely.
”Righteous acts of the LORD” as concrete historical acts (tzidqot YHWH, plural)	Bengali ধার্মিকতা (baseline) is essentially an abstract-noun/forensic-standing word; Hebrew’s plural tzidqot names specific saving deeds in history (Exodus, wilderness guidance), a countable-acts sense the abstract noun does not naturally carry.	Compound সদাপ্রভুর ধার্মিক কার্যাবলি (“the LORD’s righteous deeds/acts”) — reuses the ধার্মিকতা root (for intertextual continuity with Romans) but supplies কার্যাবলি (“deeds/works”) to restore the concrete-acts sense.
”From everlasting / from of old” as personal pre-existence (Micah 5:2)	See §2.3 above — this is not merely a hard word but a genuinely missing philosophical-theological category in ordinary Bengali, where beginningless eternity vocabulary is already claimed by an impersonal-Absolute framework.	অনাদিকাল থেকে retained, permanently fenced with mandatory theologian-reviewed note (no coinage solves this; the gap is conceptual, not lexical).
Distinct three-term sin vocabulary (chattat / pesha / avon)	See §2.5 — Bengali’s ordinary moral vocabulary does not spontaneously supply three distinct near-synonyms matching Hebrew’s semantic range.	Lock পাপ / বিদ্রোহ / অপরাধ respectively for the whole book (an assignment decision, not a true coinage, since all three words already exist in Bengali but are not conventionally distinguished this way).

3.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

These are cases where Bengali does have a ready word, but that word’s dominant cultural meaning is strong enough to actively mislead without a fence (a mandatory translator note, teaching-note apparatus, or deliberate avoidance):

1. দর্শন (vision) — Hindu devotional darshan (worshiper seeking the auspicious sight of a deity/guru) runs in the opposite direction from Micah 1:1’s chazon (God granting sight to the prophet). Fence: mandatory note reversing the directionality at first occurrence.
2. প্রতিমা / মূর্তি (idol) — see §2.1; fence against a felt attack on Hindu neighbors’ religious objects.
3. হোম / হোমবলি (burnt offering) — see §2.1; fence against implying Micah endorses ongoing ritual-sacrifice logic when his rhetorical point is the opposite.
4. অনাদি(কাল) (from everlasting) — see §2.3/§3.1; the single highest-stakes fencing requirement in the book, given collision with an impersonal Vedantic Absolute.
5. করুণা (compassion) — Buddhist karuna doctrine; fence to keep God’s compassion personal and covenant-relational, not a generalized meditative virtue.
6. নম্র / বিনয় family (humility) — Hindu bhakti devotional self-abasement (often caste-coded) and Sufi ascetic self-effacement; fence to preserve Micah’s socially engaged, non-ascetic sense.
7. দয়া (chesed, mercy) — colloquial “please/kindly” register risk; fence to preserve covenant-loyalty depth (see §2.2).
8. ন্যায়বিচার vs. ধার্মিকতা (mishpat vs. tzedeqah/dikaiosynē root) — both are “justice/righteousness” family words in English but must stay lexically distinct in Bengali; fence at every co-occurrence, since the core passage’s theological argument (societal justice ≠ forensic standing before God) depends on this distinction holding.
9. শাসক (ruler) / অনাদিকাল থেকে (from everlasting) — both risk a purely political/philosophical reading that strips Micah 5:2 of its Christological force; fence via mandatory teaching-note cross-reference to Matthew 2:6 and the baseline messiah/incarnation entries.
10. তোমার মতো ঈশ্বর আর কে আছেন? (incomparability doxology) — dual collision risk (polytheistic “best of many” misreading / tawhid-flavored anti-Trinitarian misreading); fence per §2.5.

3.3 Chapters Reviewed with No New Fencing Requirements

• Micah 1 (beyond vision/idol/high-place, already fenced above): remaining material (announcement of judgment on Samaria and Jerusalem, place-name wordplay in 1:10-16) — reviewed; no additional load-bearing doctrinal terms beyond those already logged.
• Micah 2 (beyond covet/oppress/inheritance/remnant/gather, already logged): remaining material (false prophets’ comfortable preaching, 2:6-11) reuses vocabulary already fenced under “false prophet” — reviewed, no new terms.
• Micah 4 (beyond latter days/law/kingdom_of_god/redeem, already logged): swords-into-plowshares imagery (4:3) and the “each under his own vine and fig tree” peace-image (4:4) are vivid but lexically low-risk — reviewed, no fencing required beyond note that this is agrarian-peace imagery, not requiring a Bengali cultural substitution.
• Micah 7 (beyond the terms already logged in §2.5): the closing enemy-taunt material (7:8-10) and the “shepherd your people with your staff” plea (7:14) reuse already-fenced shepherd and compassion vocabulary — reviewed, no new terms.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
YHWH (Tetragrammaton)	Established-convention rendering, not transliteration: সদাপ্রভু	Bengali Bible tradition does not phonetically transliterate YHWH; সদাপ্রভু (“the Ever-Lord/true Lord”) is the settled convention distinguishing the covenant name from Elohim (ঈশ্বর) and from courtesy “lord” (প্রভু). This is a new registration for this curriculum, extending — not contradicting — the baseline, which collapsed all three into ঈশ্বর for its NT-only scope.
Bethlehem Ephrathah	Transliteration (established Bengali Bible place-name convention): বৈৎলেহম ইফ্রাথা	Proper name; no paraphrase possible or desirable. Narrative-context gloss supplied separately (see §2.3), not built into the name itself.
”From everlasting” (mimei olam / miqedem)	Paraphrase, not transliteration: অনাদিকাল থেকে	No Hebrew phonetic form to transliterate; the paraphrase choice itself is the highest-risk decision in the book (see §2.3, §3.1) and is retained only because no safer alternative exists — deliberate coinage of a new, unfamiliar phrase would sacrifice comprehensibility for a marginal reduction in collision risk.
Covenant lawsuit (rîv)	Paraphrase + explanatory note: সদাপ্রভুর অভিযোগ	A genre-name, not transliterable; paraphrase chosen over a borrowed legal loanword (e.g., a Sanskrit/English “mamla/case” loanword) to keep the register consistent with existing Bengali Bible covenant vocabulary (নিয়ম family).
Chesed (love mercy)	Paraphrase: দয়াকে ভালোবাসা	Transliterating “chesed” was considered and rejected: an untransliterated loanword would be opaque to lay readers and would fragment vocabulary consistency with 7:18/7:20’s required identical rendering of the same Hebrew root.
Amen, Hallelujah (general OT/NT convention, referenced for consistency)	Transliteration (unchanged from baseline): আমেন, হাল্লিলূয়া	Not newly introduced in Micah’s text itself but retained here for cross-curriculum consistency per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
Diviner (qosemim)	Paraphrase using existing fenced pair: গণক / জ্যোতিষী	No transliteration warranted; reuses the baseline’s already-established জ্যোতিষী/ভাববাদী polarity rather than importing a new loanword.
”Mishpat,” “chesed,” “hatsnea lekhet” as bare Hebrew loanwords (considered and rejected option)	Rejected across the board.	Unlike some target-language traditions that gloss with transliterated Hebrew technical terms in study-Bible footnotes, this curriculum’s register (formal modern Bengali, Class 8–10 reading level per the baseline’s 12_ai_translation_requirements.md) explicitly avoids technical loanwords not already in the approved glossary. All three of Micah 6:8’s key terms are rendered in natural Bengali phrases, with theological depth carried by translator notes rather than untranslated Hebrew.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Micah

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of collision × breadth of audience affected):

1. “From everlasting” / অনাদিকাল থেকে (Micah 5:2) — Critical. Direct collision with Vedantic impersonal-Absolute metaphysics; the single highest-stakes phrase in the book; misrendering could convert a Christological pre-existence claim into a philosophical abstraction with no personal Son. Mandatory theologian review at every occurrence.

2. Mishpat (ন্যায়বিচার) vs. baseline righteousness (ধার্মিকতা) — Critical. The core passage’s (6:8) entire argument — that God requires social justice and not merely cultic performance or a claim to forensic standing — collapses if these two roots are allowed to blur into one Bengali concept. Every co-occurrence requires the distinguishing note.

3. উদ্ধার করা vs. মুক্তি-family vocabulary (redeem) — Critical. A single lapse into natural Bengali “liberation” idiom for ga’al/padah would reproduce the exact Hindu-moksha/rebirth-cycle collision the baseline’s salvation-vocabulary ruling was designed to prevent. High likelihood of accidental drift precisely because উদ্ধার করা is slightly less idiomatically natural than a মুক্তি-derivative.

4. শাসক (ruler, Micah 5:2) read as merely political, stripped of messianic force — Critical. Without the mandatory Matthew 2:6 cross-reference, the verse central to this curriculum’s “Coming Ruler from Bethlehem” doctrine could be taught as a generic ANE royal-succession oracle.

5. প্রতিমা/মূর্তি (idol) read as a critique of Hindu neighbors rather than Israel’s own history — High. Highest risk of pastoral (not lexical) harm: could actively damage interfaith relationships and mission credibility in West Bengal if unfenced.

6. হোম/হোমবলি (burnt offering) read as validating ongoing Hindu homa ritual logic by vocabulary association — High. Risk is inverted from #5: here the danger is the reader concluding Micah endorses ritual-sacrifice logic, when 6:6-8’s rhetorical structure argues the opposite.

7. দর্শন (vision) read with reversed directionality (worshiper-seeks vs. God-grants) — High. Subtle but pervasive: affects how the reader understands prophetic authority throughout the book, not just 1:1.

8. তোমার মতো ঈশ্বর আর কে আছেন? (incomparability doxology, 7:18) — High. Dual-direction misreading risk (polytheistic “best of many” vs. tawhid-flavored anti-Trinitarian proof-texting) affecting both major audience segments differently.

9. করুণা (compassion, racham) read through a Buddhist meditative-compassion frame — Medium-High. Less doctrinally catastrophic than #1–4 but pervasive across the book’s climactic chapter 7 restoration passages.

10. দয়াকে ভালোবাসা (chesed) read at “please/kindly” colloquial strength rather than covenant-loyalty depth — Medium-High. Risk is under-translation (making a Critical demand sound like ordinary politeness) rather than doctrinal collision, but it directly weakens the core passage’s rhetorical force.

11. নম্রভাবে চলা (walk humbly) read through caste-coded bhakti বিনয় or ascetic-withdrawal frames — Medium-High. Risk of the third requirement of 6:8 being heard as either socially deferential self-abasement or otherworldly renunciation, both foreign to Micah’s socially engaged sense.

12. অবশিষ্টাংশ (remnant) flattened to demographic “leftovers” — Medium. Weakens the Hope of Restoration doctrine’s covenant-promise weight if taught without the Romans 9–11 cross-link already available in the baseline.

13. সদাপ্রভুর অভিযোগ (covenant lawsuit genre) read as an ordinary complaint/quarrel — Medium. Primarily an audience-comprehension risk (genre unfamiliarity) rather than a doctrinal-collision risk.

14. Three-term sin vocabulary (পাপ/বিদ্রোহ/অপরাধ) collapsed into পাপ alone — Medium. Would flatten the rhetorical crescendo of 7:18-19 but does not on its own introduce false doctrine, since পাপ is itself doctrinally sound.

15. দাঁড়িপাল্লা / সহিংসতা (dishonest scales / violence) — Low. Concrete, low-ambiguity images; included here only to confirm full-book review, not because of material risk.

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6. Recommendations for Phase 2 Handoff

1. Register সদাপ্রভু (YHWH), দর্শন, প্রতিমা/মূর্তি, ন্যায়বিচার, দয়া, নম্রভাবে চলা, হোমবলি, বিদ্রোহ, অপরাধ, করুণা, অনাদিকাল থেকে, শাসক, অবশিষ্টাংশ, উদ্ধার করা, and সদাপ্রভুর অভিযোগ in translation_memory.json before any Phase 2 segment translation begins, per the version-increment procedure in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
2. All terms marked Critical in §5 (items 1-4) must be routed to human theologian review at every occurrence, not merely on first introduction, consistent with the baseline’s escalation rules for Incarnation/Deity-of-Christ/Messianic-Promise-class terms.
3. Every fenced term in §3.2 requires its translator note to be carried into the segment cache as reviewable metadata (not visible in final learner-facing text), matching the baseline’s [TRANSLATOR NOTE: ...] convention.
4. The core passage’s three parallel imperatives (do justice / love mercy / walk humbly) must be validated at the syntax level, not just the lexical level, in every Phase 2 draft — flag any structural subordination of one clause to another for native-speaker review.
5. This document, the Core Glossary (08_core_glossary.md), and the forthcoming doctrine risk registry extension for Micah must remain mutually consistent; any future revision to a rendering here requires a corresponding version-increment in translation memory and a corresponding update to the glossary.