1 Kings — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)

0. Purpose and Method

This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8. It does not re-derive the term inventory already established in 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json; it analyzes that inventory for structural gaps — where Hmong has no ready vocabulary at all, where Hmong has too much overlapping vocabulary competing for the same doctrinal territory (“crowded semantic neighborhoods” requiring lexical fencing), where a transliteration decision is doctrinally preferable to a paraphrase (or vice versa), and which specific ambiguities carry the highest risk of inverting or neutralizing a doctrine if left unaddressed in Phase 2 generation.

All renderings cited below are inherited verbatim from the Romans baseline TM where marked, or drawn from the provisional 1 Kings registry (Section B glossary entries, term registry ids) pending formal TM-revision review. Nothing here authorizes any new rendering to become permanent; that authority rests with the TM-revision protocol in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §2.4.

Coverage note: every chapter of 1 Kings (1–22) is represented at least once across Sections 1–3 below, either as a load-bearing source of a gap/collision or explicitly logged as reviewed-with-no-new-linguistic-gap in Section 1’s matrix footnotes.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the six assigned doctrines: the Hmong vocabulary currently available (inherited + newly proposed), its structural weaknesses, and the recommended Phase 2 strategy.

1.1 Solomon’s Wisdom and Its Limits

Element	Detail
Available terms	tswvyim (wisdom, B10/registry #70); Vajtswv lub siab nyiam (will of God, inherited); kev txiav txim ncaj ncees (justice, B33/#72); kev hwm thiab ntshai Vajtswv (fear of the LORD, B35/#16); lub siab tawv (hardening, inherited, applied to Rehoboam ch.12)
Weaknesses	(1) tswvyim alone is a bare noun with no built-in marker that it is conditionally granted rather than an innate personal trait — the same structural weakness the baseline documents for kev xaiv (election) versus bare hmoov. (2) No existing Hmong lexical item captures “wisdom that can coexist with, and even mask, apostasy” — chs. 3–10 present Solomon as maximally wise while ch. 11 shows the same man’s heart “turned away.” Without a structural pairing convention, curriculum content risks presenting ch. 3–10 as a self-contained success narrative. (3) tswvyim is also the ordinary secular word for cleverness/skill (e.g., a skilled craftsman, a shrewd trader), creating a register-flattening risk where Solomon’s God-given discernment reads as mere practical cleverness.
Recommended strategy	Mandate a fixed collocation for every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence: tswvyim uas Vajtswv pub rau [name] (“wisdom that God gave to…”), never bare tswvyim, mirroring the Vajtswv hwjchim qualifier-enforcement pattern already structural in the Romans baseline (§2.2 of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md). Every curriculum unit treating ch. 3’s wisdom-request must be structurally paired with ch. 11’s apostasy in the same lesson or explicit cross-reference, per Cross-Reference Note C.4 in 08_core_glossary.md. This is a comprehension/register-gap issue (Medium-High), not a traditional-religion collision, but it is promoted to Critical doctrinal handling because the entire “Its Limits” half of the doctrine depends on this pairing discipline being enforced, not merely encouraged.

1.2 The Temple as God’s Dwelling among His People

Element	Detail
Available terms	Lub Tuam Tsev ntawm Vajtswv (Temple, B5/#18); Vajtswv lub npe + mandatory “cannot be contained” clause (B3-B4/#19-20); Lub Thawv Sib Cog Lus (Ark, B6/#21); Lub Chaw Dawb Huv Tshaj Plaws (Holy of Holies, B20/#22); cov npua tsov muaj tis (cherubim, B20/#23); lub Hiav Txwv Tooj Liab (bronze Sea, B42/#24)
Weaknesses	(1) tsev (“house”) is the single most crowded word in this entire doctrine’s vocabulary set — Hmong households maintain literal spirit-houses (tsev dab), ancestor-altar corners, and site-bound nature/guardian spirits that “dwell” in specific structures requiring ongoing ritual feeding. The qualifier ntawm Vajtswv fences the noun but does not by itself block the residence-model inference (a god who lives in, depends on, and is fed/maintained by a house). (2) lub npe (name) collides with the Hmong practice of ritually calling a wandering soul back by name (hu plig) — this is arguably the single most theologically dense collision point in the whole book, since 8:16-53 structures its entire argument around God’s Name dwelling in the Temple while God himself remains in heaven. (3) No existing Hmong term distinguishes “symbolic/derivative holiness of a place” from “a place literally inhabited by a spirit-being,” which is precisely the distinction 8:27 (“will God indeed dwell on the earth?”) is designed to make.
Recommended strategy	Treat B3+B4 (Name theology + transcendence clause) as a single inseparable doctrinal unit, never generated independently of each other — this extends the existing baseline pattern of atomic qualifier-pairs (e.g., hwjchim+Vajtswv). Every occurrence of “the LORD’s Name dwelling” in 8:16, 29, 44 must be immediately followed, within the same paragraph, by the transcendence clause (Vajtswv yeej tsis raug kaw rau hauv ib lub tsev). This is assessed Critical, on par with the Romans baseline’s holy_spirit and election_choose entries, because an un-fenced reading collapses Israelite Temple theology into the exact household-spirit-residence model the doctrine is designed to refute.

1.3 The Divided Kingdom and Covenant Unfaithfulness

Element	Detail
Available terms	kev sib cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv thiab nws haiv neeg) (covenant, B1/#8); lub Nceeg Vaj Yixalayees raug muab dua/rhuav (divided kingdom, B19/#45); lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (Kingdom of God, contrast term, A18/#46); ua tej uas phem/ncaj ncees tab meeg Vajtswv lub qhov muag (regnal evaluation formula, B27/#47); lub siab tawv (hardening, #69)
Weaknesses	(1) The near-homophony of shape between lub Nceeg Vaj Yixalayees (the earthly, judged, divided kingdom) and lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (God’s own eschatological Kingdom) creates a real risk of conflation for any hearer/reader encountering both in the same lesson — the words Nceeg Vaj appear in both. (2) Hmong covenant-adjacent vocabulary (cog lus, oath-making) is drawn from a culture where oaths are peer-negotiated, mutually binding, and can be dissolved by mutual failure — this underspecifies the asymmetric, divinely-initiated, unilaterally-sustained-yet-conditionally-experienced nature of the Davidic covenant that 1 Kings 8:25/9:4-9 requires. (3) The regnal evaluation formula’s underlying standard (covenant fidelity, not worldly outcome) has no native evaluative vocabulary distinguishing it from ordinary success/failure judgment of rulers.
Recommended strategy	Enforce a structural typographic/phrasal distinction: the earthly kingdom is never rendered with a bare lub Nceeg Vaj alone — always lub Nceeg Vaj Yixalayees (or ...Yudas, ...Ixayees post-division) — while God’s Kingdom retains its fixed lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv form; the two must never appear rendered identically in any generated text, and any generation context that would abbreviate either is flagged. Covenant vocabulary (B1) requires the explicit unilateral-initiation teaching note documented in the glossary at every occurrence, not merely at first use. Assessed High (not Critical) because, unlike the Name-theology or grace collisions, no single traditional-religion practice actively inverts the doctrine — the risk is comprehension-drift and doctrinal-category conflation, manageable with the disambiguation strategy above.

1.4 Idolatry and Its Consequences

Element	Detail
Available terms	dab mlom (idol, A5/#54); lwm tus vajtswv (other gods, B17/#55); Npa-as (Baal, transliteration, B17/#56); lub thaj (rau Vajtswv) / (rau lwm tus vajtswv) (altar, B14/#25); tej chaw siab (high place, B16/#26); khoom fij (rau Vajtswv) (sacrifice, B15/#28); dab mlom sawv cev ua tus nyuj kub (golden calf, B18/#57); qhov kev ua uas Vajtswv ntxub heev (abomination, #58); tej pas zeb dawb huv (rau lwm tus vajtswv) / Asela (standing stones/Asherah, B41/#33)
Weaknesses	This is the single densest crowded-neighborhood cluster in the book (see §3.1 below in full). In brief: thaj (altar), fij (sacrifice/offering), and chaw siab (high place) are not comprehension gaps at all — they are live, currently-practiced Hmong ritual vocabulary items (household/clan spirit-altars, animal sacrifice to appease ancestors/nature spirits, elevated ritual sites), meaning the default, unmarked reading of every one of these words in a Hmong hearer’s mind is the traditional-religion referent, not a neutral or biblical one.
Recommended strategy	Mandatory object-marking at every single occurrence, no exceptions, of thaj, fij, and chaw siab — never left to context or prior-mention memory to disambiguate, since the entire Elijah-Baal narrative (ch. 18) depends on rapid alternation between the LORD’s altar/sacrifice and Baal’s altar/sacrifice within the same short passage. This is assessed Critical — the highest-density collision cluster identified anywhere in the 1 Kings vocabulary set — and requires human theologian review for every generated unit touching these terms, with zero automated-review bypass, consistent with the Romans baseline’s Critical-tier routing rule.

1.5 Elijah and the Contest with Baal

Element	Detail
Available terms	Npa-as (Baal, B17/#56); hluavtaws saum ntuj los (fire from heaven, B31/#40); pehawm / pab teev (worship/serve, A9/#27); taug ob txoj kev ntxeev npau ntxeev qaij (wavering between two opinions, #42); hu rau tus Tswv lub npe (calling on the Name, #41); lub suab me me ntsiag to (still small voice, B25/#38); txoj kev khib siab rau tus Tswv (jealousy/zeal, B24/#17)
Weaknesses	(1) hluavtaws saum ntuj los describes exactly the kind of dramatic supernatural-power display shamanic narrative tradition also claims for its practitioners (fire-handling, spirit-summoned phenomena); without an explicit Vajtswv hwjchim anchor, Carmel’s fire risks being received as “impressive spirit-power,” one marvel among many available marvels, rather than unique divine self-vindication. (2) hu (call) is the identical verb used in the soul-recall ritual hu plig; 18:24-26’s repeated “call on the name of your god” is the chapter’s structural refrain, meaning this single collision point recurs many times in one passage. (3) pehawm applied to Baal (pehawm Npa-as, negative use) is doctrinally correct and even useful as a model of the forbidden pattern, but if the curriculum does not explicitly flag it as a modeled negative example, it risks being read as simply “worship” in a neutral descriptive sense rather than the condemned act itself.
Recommended strategy	Anchor every Carmel fire-reference explicitly to Vajtswv hwjchim, tsis yog ib yam khoom xwm txheej ntawm ib tug dab twg (“God’s own power, not a supernatural phenomenon available to any spirit”) in teaching notes. For the hu/calling-on-the-name refrain, mandate disambiguating co-text at every occurrence distinguishing petitionary address to a real, personal God from ritual soul-summoning technique (extends the B3/B4 Name-theology fencing into ch. 18). Assessed Critical for the fire/power vocabulary specifically (extending the Romans baseline’s existing Critical-adjacent treatment of dynamis/hwjchim), High for the remainder of the cluster.

1.6 Prophetic Confrontation of Kings

Element	Detail
Available terms	tus cev Vajtswv Txoj Lus (prophet, B11/#34); tus neeg ntawm Vajtswv (man of God, #35); tus Tswv Txojlus tuaj rau... (word of the LORD formula, B12/#36); tus cev lus tseeb ntawm Vajtswv / cov cev lus cuav (true vs. false prophet, B43/#37); Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Holy Spirit, contrast anchor, A24/#4); dab tso plob / dab dag ntxias (lying spirit, B29/#7); Vajtswv cov tub teg tub taws saum ntuj (heavenly council, B28/#39)
Weaknesses	(1) This is the doctrine with the single largest structural gap: Hmong has a well-developed, culturally prestigious vocabulary and role for a spirit-medium (txiv neeb) who receives trance-messages from spirits/ancestors, typically for a paying client, verified within the community by efficacy rather than by textual/moral consistency-testing. Biblical prophecy has no clean unmarked equivalent — every available noun risks importing the shamanic frame. (2) The “lying spirit” of ch. 22 sits directly adjacent, in the same narrative unit, to the true prophet Micaiah — meaning the collision risk of B29 bleeding into A24 (Vaj Ntsuj Plig) is maximally concentrated in a single chapter, more so than anywhere else in the book. (3) There is no existing Hmong idiom for “testing” a spirit-message against a prior, fixed, written revelation (Deut. 13/18’s test, which ch. 22 narratively re-enacts) — shamanic legitimacy in Hmong practice is judged by outcome/efficacy, not by consistency with a prior fixed textual standard.
Recommended strategy	(a) Never render nabi with any noun built on the neeb/txiv neeb root family — this is already implicit in B11’s chosen tus cev Vajtswv Txoj Lus but should be made an explicit forbidden substitution (see §4.3 below) given the severity of the risk. (b) Every occurrence of dab tso plob/dab dag ntxias (ch. 22’s lying spirit) must appear in the same generation unit as an explicit disclaimer that this is not, and must never be confused with, Vaj Ntsuj Plig. (c) Introduce a dedicated teaching-note formula for the “test of a true prophet” (alignment with previously revealed character/word, not efficacy or trance-vividness) at ch. 22, explicitly contrasted with efficacy-based shamanic legitimacy standards. Assessed Critical — this doctrine contains the book’s single most consequential missing-vocabulary gap (no non-colliding noun for “prophet” exists) compounded by the book’s most delicate divine/non-divine spirit-adjacency risk (ch. 22).

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2. Missing Vocabulary (True Comprehension Gaps, No Native Equivalent)

These are cases where Hmong simply lacks a ready lexical item — not a collision with a competing referent, but an absence requiring either paraphrase-construction or transliteration (see §4).

Gap	Passage(s)	Why It Is Missing	Chosen Strategy (from glossary)
Royal anointing-with-oil for office	1:32-40	No native Hmong kingship-investiture-by-oil practice	Descriptive paraphrase muab roj laum (tsa ua vaj ntxwv) (B13/#30), explicit note distinguishing from folk-medicinal/protective oil use
Cherubim as heavenly-court iconography	6:23-28, 8:6-7	No native category for symbolic composite guardian-figures representing divine court (distinct from totemic guardian-spirit figures, which DO exist and must be avoided as a false bridge)	Descriptive cov npua tsov muaj tis (B20/#23) with mandatory non-idol teaching note
Bronze Sea / priestly ablution basin	7:23-26	No native large-basin ritual-washing furniture; nearest cultural analogue is repeatable spirit-contamination cleansing, which is the wrong analogue	lub Hiav Txwv Tooj Liab (B42/#24), fenced against the baseline baptism entry’s repeatability warning
Herem (things/persons devoted to destruction)	20:35-43	No clean Hmong holy-war/irrevocable-consecration-to-judgment concept	Long descriptive paraphrase (B26/#52), explicitly framed as one-time specific historical judgment, never generalized
Heavenly council / divine throne-room scene	22:19-23	Hmong cosmology has ranked, negotiating spirit-hierarchies but not a unified sovereign court under one supreme, unrivaled God	Vajtswv cov tub teg tub taws saum ntuj (B28/#39) with explicit sovereignty-framing note
Regnal evaluation formula as an exclusively covenant-fidelity metric	recurring, chs. 14-22	Hmong (like most cultures) intuitively evaluates leaders by prosperity/outcome; there is no existing idiom for “a leader can succeed materially and still be under judgment”	ua tej uas phem/ncaj ncees tab meeg Vajtswv lub qhov muag (B27/#47) with mandatory corrective teaching note at first and recurring use
”Wavering between two opinions” (religious double-mindedness as public spectacle)	18:21	Idiom exists (taug ob txoj kev ntxeev npau ntxeev qaij) but the underlying diagnostic category — maintaining two simultaneous cultic loyalties as a namable social pathology, rather than simple indecision — is not a fixed doctrinal category in folk usage	Retain idiom, add explicit syncretism-diagnostic framing in teaching notes

Chapters explicitly reviewed with no new missing-vocabulary gap surfaced: 4 (administrative/court-list material — comprehension-level only, no doctrinal terms beyond shalom/kev thaj yeeb already fixed), 10 (Queen of Sheba narrative — reuses tswvyim/lub yeeb koob, no new gap), 15 (regnal-formula repetition — reuses B27/#47), 17 (Elijah/widow narrative — reuses nokri/foreigner B30 and kev cawm dim background sense, no new gap).

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3. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Unlike Section 2’s absences, these are clusters where Hmong has abundant, culturally live vocabulary that actively competes with the biblical referent for the same word, requiring explicit lexical fencing (mandatory qualifiers, object-marking, or contrast notes) rather than new-word invention.

3.1 The Sacrifice/Altar/High-Place Cluster (fij, thaj, chaw siab) — CRITICAL

This is the single most crowded neighborhood in the entire book. All three nouns are drawn from currently practiced Hmong ritual vocabulary:

• thaj — the household/clan spirit-altar (thaj dab, thaj xwm kab) present in traditional Hmong homes.
• fij — the verb/noun for ritual animal offering to ancestors/spirits, already flagged Critical in the Romans baseline for its NT living-sacrifice/atonement uses and now extended into the OT cultic-system context, where it appears far more densely and far more literally (actual animal sacrifice, not metaphorical).
• chaw siab — elevated ritual sites (sacred groves, mountain shrines) still maintained in some traditional practice contexts.

Fencing rule: every occurrence of all three nouns must carry an explicit object-marker (rau Vajtswv vs. rau lwm tus vajtswv/rau Npa-as) with zero exceptions, including in headers, quiz options, and footnotes — directly extending the Romans baseline’s structural, non-optional qualifier-enforcement pattern (§2.2 of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md) to these three items. The neutral-vs-condemned internal contrast for chaw siab (Gibeon, ch. 3, vs. Bethel, ch. 12+) must never be flattened to a single uniform negative gloss, or the text’s own historical nuance (high places were not ipso facto sinful before Temple-centralization) is lost.

3.2 The Divine-Being Cluster (Vajtswv / lwm tus vajtswv / dab / dab mlom) — CRITICAL

Vajtswv (the true God) and lwm tus vajtswv/dab/dab mlom (rival gods/idols) sit in maximal proximity throughout chs. 11–22. This is not a comprehension gap but a discipline requirement: because Hmong traditional religion is functionally pluralistic (multiple real, competing spirit-powers, each accorded genuine if limited efficacy), any blurring of the Vajtswv/lwm tus vajtswv line reads as consonant with, rather than opposed to, the hearer’s existing cosmology. The book’s rhetorical strategy (especially Carmel, ch. 18) is to deny Baal’s reality/power altogether, not merely to rank the LORD above him. Fencing rule: capitalization/compound-status of Vajtswv must never be extended to any other referent, and lwm tus vajtswv must never be silently shortened to bare tus vajtswv in a way that could read as a second legitimate deity-reference.

3.3 The Name/Calling/Invocation Cluster (hu, lub npe) — CRITICAL

hu (to call/summon) and lub npe (name) both carry heavy pre-existing ritual freight: hu plig (ritually calling a wandering soul back into the body) and hu dab (summoning a spirit). This cluster recurs in three separate doctrinal contexts — Temple Name-theology (ch. 8), Carmel’s “call on the name of your god” refrain (ch. 18), and implicitly in prophetic invocation formulas throughout. Fencing rule: never allow hu + a divine object to stand without disambiguating co-text distinguishing personal address/petition to a living, personal, transcendent God from ritual name-based soul-recall/spirit-summoning technique.

3.4 The Spirit/Soul Cluster (Vaj Ntsuj Plig / ntsuj plig / dab tso plob) — CRITICAL

Already Critical in the Romans baseline for the divine/anthropological distinction alone; 1 Kings adds a third member — the lying/deceiving spirit of ch. 22 — sitting in maximum narrative proximity to true prophecy in the same chapter. This is the most delicate three-way fence in the entire Language Package: (a) Vaj Ntsuj Plig must remain reserved exclusively for the divine Person; (b) bare ntsuj plig remains reserved for the anthropological referent (8:48’s nephesh); (c) dab tso plob/dab dag ntxias must never borrow the Vaj prefix nor be presented as an autonomous rival power independent of God’s own sovereign permission. No two of these three may ever be rendered identically or allowed to visually/phonetically merge.

3.5 The Holiness-Root Cluster (dawb huv vs. qadesh-derived cultic prostitution) — CRITICAL

Uniquely among the clusters above, this is a source-language-internal trap rather than a target-culture collision: the Hebrew root for “holy/set apart” (qadash) is the same root underlying the term for the male cult-prostitute (qadesh, 14:24). If a Hmong translator, noticing the shared root, attempted a parallel shared-root Hmong rendering, the positive sanctification vocabulary (dawb huv, already Critical in the Romans baseline for its own separate folk ritual-purity collision) would become visually/lexically fused with cultic prostitution. Fencing rule: the cultic-prostitute referent must be rendered by total circumlocution (tus ua kev nkauj nraug rau kev pe hawm mlom) sharing no morpheme with dawb huv, reversing rather than mirroring the source language’s ironic wordplay.

3.6 The Servant/Slave Cluster (qhev positive-honorific vs. negative-conscription vs. Romans-baseline chattel sense) — HIGH

Three distinct referents now compete for related vocabulary: (a) the Romans-baseline qhev (Paul’s self-abasing bondservant metaphor, High risk, chattel-slavery connotation); (b) the OT honorific “my servant David/Elijah” (ebed YHWH), a register-mismatch if rendered with bare qhev; (c) mas/forced labor conscription (B37/#48), which the text itself later condemns (12:4) and which must not be conflated with either (a) or (b). Fencing rule: honorific royal/prophetic “servant of the LORD” always requires the added honorific-framing note (B22/#49); forced labor is never rendered with qhev-family vocabulary at all.

3.7 The Grace/Mercy/Steadfast-Love Cluster (txiaj ntsim / txoj kev khuv leej / txoj kev hlub ruaj khov / kev hlub) — HIGH

Four related-but-distinct divine dispositions now occupy adjacent semantic space in the core passage alone (8:23-53: chesed, rachamim, chen implicitly contrasted, ahavah). The Romans baseline already disciplines the grace/mercy distinction (Critical for grace, Medium for mercy); 1 Kings adds chesed (covenant loyalty) as a fourth member requiring its own lexical fence (txoj kev hlub ruaj khov) distinct from all three others. Fencing rule: none of the four terms may be used interchangeably as stylistic variation; each must retain its assigned rendering at every occurrence within the core passage, consistent with §5’s “no stylistic variation permitted” rule inherited from the Romans baseline.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

4.1 Retain as Transliteration (proper nouns, no viable Hmong gloss)

Term	Rendering	Rationale
Baal	Npa-as	Proper name of a specific rival deity; paraphrasing (e.g., “the storm god”) would generalize a specific historical-religious referent and weaken the text’s insistence on naming and refuting a particular, historically real cult. Parallels the Romans baseline’s retention of Abba as a proper loanword.
Solomon, David, Elijah, Elisha, Jeroboam, Ahab, Jezebel, etc.	Standard existing Hmong Bible transliterations	Already-settled proper names in existing Hmong Bible tradition; no departure needed, consistent with Yexus Khetos/Povlauj baseline precedent.
Asherah (as a named cult-object/deity-adjacent term)	Asela (transliteration) alongside descriptive tej pas zeb dawb huv (rau lwm tus vajtswv) for the physical object	Dual approach: the deity-name is transliterated (proper noun, no native equivalent), while the physical cult-object it names is described functionally, following the same logic as Baal/idol above.

4.2 Retain as Paraphrase/Descriptive Circumlocution (no transliteration, would be doctrinally opaque or would import unwanted associations)

Term	Rendering	Rationale for Rejecting Transliteration
Cherem (devoted to destruction)	tus neeg uas Vajtswv twb muab cob rau kev puas tsuaj lawm	A transliterated loanword would be entirely opaque to a Hmong reader with no access to the underlying Hebrew legal-covenantal category; unlike Baal (a nameable rival), this is a procedural/legal concept requiring explanation, not a name requiring preservation.
Qadesh (cult prostitute)	tus ua kev nkauj nraug rau kev pe hawm mlom	Transliteration would create a new, meaningless-sounding loanword while forfeiting the chance to make the practice’s nature explicit; per §3.5, must also avoid any shared morpheme with dawb huv.
Bamah (high place)	tej chaw siab (context-marked)	A transliterated loanword would flatten the crucial neutral/condemned distinction the narrative itself maintains (Gibeon vs. Bethel); the descriptive phrase preserves the ability to context-mark.
Nabi (prophet)	tus cev Vajtswv Txoj Lus	A transliterated loanword (“nabi”) would sidestep rather than resolve the shaman-adjacency risk (§1.6) and would cut the term off from any existing Hmong Christian usage pattern, repeating the exact error the Romans baseline already rejected for a transliterated “baptism” loanword.

4.3 Newly Proposed Forbidden Substitutions (extending Romans baseline §3)

Forbidden Substitution	Correct Rendering	Reason
Any txiv neeb/neeb-root vocabulary for nabi (prophet) or the “word of the LORD came to” formula	tus cev Vajtswv Txoj Lus; tus Tswv Txojlus tuaj rau...	Imports the trance-possession, paid-divination, efficacy-verified shamanic frame directly into the text’s own self-authenticating prophetic office, the single largest missing-vocabulary risk identified in §1.6/§2.
hmoov-family vocabulary for tswvyim (Solomon’s wisdom)	tswvyim uas Vajtswv pub rau [name]	Collapses conditionally-granted, morally-revocable divine gift into innate fated cleverness, erasing the “Limits” half of the doctrine — direct extension of the Romans baseline’s existing hmoov prohibition for election/foreknowledge.
dawb huv-root vocabulary for the cultic-prostitute referent (qadesh, 14:24)	Full circumlocution sharing no morpheme with dawb huv	Fuses the sanctification doctrine’s positive vocabulary with cultic prostitution via a shared-root translation choice that inverts Scripture’s own ironic critical usage.
hu plig/hu dab-style unmarked hu for divine invocation (Name theology, Carmel refrain)	hu rau tus Tswv lub npe with mandatory disambiguating co-text	Suggests salvation/deliverance-by-invocation functions as a ritual soul-calling technique rather than personal address to a living, personal, transcendent God — extends the Romans baseline’s existing prohibition on hu for “call on the name of the Lord” (Rom 10:9-13) into 1 Kings 8 and 18.
Presenting the lying spirit (22:19-23) as an autonomous rival power negotiating with God as an equal	dab tso plob / dab dag ntxias, always explicitly framed as operating strictly under God’s sovereign permission	Would validate rather than refute the animistic assumption of a pantheon of independently negotiating spirit-powers, undermining the Election/Sovereignty doctrine this scene is structurally extending into 1 Kings.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision strength × frequency of occurrence in the core passage and book):

1. Name theology unfenced from transcendence clause (8:16-53; B3+B4) — If “God’s Name dwelling in the Temple” is ever generated without its paired “cannot be contained” clause in the same unit, the core passage’s central theological achievement collapses into a household-spirit-residence reading. Highest risk because it is the theological hinge of the core passage itself.

2. Sacrifice/altar/high-place object-marking dropped even once (ch. 3, 8, 12, 13, 18) — A single unmarked occurrence of fij or thaj in the Elijah-Baal narrative risks the entire contest being read as “our sacrifice vs. their sacrifice” within a shared, valid ritual system, rather than the exposure of Baal’s total non-existence/non-power.

3. nabi rendered with or drifting toward txiv neeb/shamanic register (throughout, climax ch. 22) — The single largest true vocabulary gap in the book; any register-slip here reframes the entire prophetic office as a variant form of the shamanic practice the doctrine must refute.

4. dab tso plob (lying spirit) bleeding into Vaj Ntsuj Plig (22:19-23) — Maximal narrative proximity between true divine Spirit-adjacent vocabulary and a permitted deceiving spirit in a single chapter; any lexical slip here is a Critical-tier doctrinal error on par with the Romans baseline’s most severe entries.

5. Vajtswv/lwm tus vajtswv boundary blur (chs. 11, 16, 18, 22) — Given Hmong religious pluralism’s live cosmological assumptions, any softening of this boundary (e.g., translating “other gods” in a way that grants them ontological parity) reverses the book’s central polemical argument.

6. hu (call) unmarked for divine invocation (8:29-52 refrain; 18:24-26 refrain) — High-frequency recurrence within the core passage itself; repeated exposure to an unmarked collision compounds the risk more than a single-occurrence issue would.

7. tswvyim (wisdom) presented without the conditional-grant/limits pairing (chs. 3-4, 10 vs. 11) — Risk of curriculum content structurally omitting ch. 11 when teaching Solomon’s wisdom, producing a doctrinally incomplete (and therefore false-by-omission) portrait.

8. dawb huv-root contamination of the cultic-prostitute referent (14:24) — Lower frequency (single occurrence) but severe if mishandled, since it directly inverts the sanctification doctrine’s positive vocabulary through a shared-root translation error.

9. qhev applied to David/Elijah without the honorific-framing note (1:26 area, 8:23-53, ch. 11, 14) — Risk of unintentionally demeaning revered figures, weakening rather than inverting doctrine, hence ranked below the Critical items above.

10. Regnal evaluation formula read as worldly-success metric (recurring chs. 14-22) — A slow-accumulating comprehension drift rather than a single sharp collision; ranked lowest among the top ten because its doctrinal damage is diffuse and correctable across many teaching touchpoints rather than concentrated in one passage.

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6. Forward Recommendations for TM-Revision Review

1. All Section 4.3 forbidden substitutions should be formally adopted into the 1 Kings TM-revision record alongside the Romans baseline’s existing §3.1/§3.2 tables, under the same “permanently forbidden” enforcement discipline.
2. The atomic-pairing rule proposed for Name theology (§1.2) and for Solomon’s-wisdom conditional-grant framing (§1.1) should be added to 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §2.2’s structural qualifier-enforcement list as two new mandatory atomic units for the 1 Kings package.
3. Given that four of the six doctrines in this curriculum (Temple, Idolatry, Elijah/Baal, Prophetic Confrontation) are assessed Critical in this analysis — a higher proportion than the Romans baseline’s already-severe all-Critical/High profile — Phase 2 generation for 1 Kings should anticipate a higher per-unit theologian-review burden than the Romans package, not an equal one, notwithstanding the Romans baseline’s already-maximal review routing.

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This document is a Phase 1 analytical deliverable. All proposed renderings, fencing rules, and forbidden substitutions remain provisional pending formal TM-revision review and native-speaker/theologian confirmation before becoming permanent, enforceable translation-memory entries for the 1 Kings Hmong Language Package.