Linguistic Gap Analysis
Judges — Phase 1 Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)
0. Purpose, Method, and Governing Constraint
This document performs the Step 8 linguistic-gap analysis required before Phase 2 Translation Memory extension. It does not propose any alternate rendering for a term already fixed in the Romans baseline assets/translation_memory.json, nor for any term already logged in the Judges analysis/08_core_glossary.md (Parts A-B) or assets/bible_term_registry.json. Its purpose is to:
- Map each of the six assigned Judges doctrines against the Hmong vocabulary actually available, naming specific weaknesses and a recommended mitigation strategy (§1).
- Distinguish missing vocabulary (genuine comprehension gaps with no native Hmong lexeme) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (native Hmong lexemes that already carry a competing traditional-religious sense and must be “fenced” with qualifiers/teaching notes) (§2).
- Adjudicate, term by term, the transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision for every new proper name and cultic-object term surfaced in Judges (§3).
- Rank the book’s highest-risk ambiguities in a single prioritized list for downstream Phase 2 enforcement and human-theologian routing (§4).
- Confirm full-book chapter coverage, explicitly logging any chapter contributing nothing new (§5).
All risk-tier labels below reuse the fixed definitions in assets/bible_term_registry.json → registry_metadata.risk_tier_definitions. Where a term is inherited unchanged from Romans, this is marked [ROM]; where it is new to Judges but already logged in 08_core_glossary.md/registry, it is marked with its item ID (e.g., J6, #21).
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
Doctrine 1 — The Cycle of Sin, Judgment, and Deliverance
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
txhaum / kev txhaum (sin) [ROM] | Hmong custom frames wrongdoing as reparable social/ritual fault against elders/clan/spirits, not objective covenant-breach before God; the cyclical, repeating nature of Judges’ apostasy (unlike Romans’ once-stated universal guilt) risks being read as a series of unrelated, separately-repairable incidents rather than one deepening covenant pattern. | Always render the recurring formula “did evil in the sight of the LORD” (ua kev phem rau tus Tswv pom — see §4 ranked item) with an explicit temporal/serial marker (“thiab … dua,” “again”) linking each occurrence back to the prior cycle, so the pattern is visible, not just the isolated act. |
kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv (wrath) [ROM] | Collides with capricious, ritual-appeasable spirit/ancestor anger; Judges intensifies this risk with the recurring “his anger burned/was kindled” idiom (2:14), which in Hmong idiom could sound like an emotional flare that a ritual offering resolves. | Reuse the Romans-baseline fixed collocation exactly; add the intensifier as a separate adverbial clause (“kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv cig heev”) rather than inventing a new compound, and pair with the mandatory non-appeasability teaching note at every occurrence (2, 3, 6, 10). |
kev cawm dim / cawm (deliverance) [ROM] | The verb “dim” (escape) parallels shamanic soul-rescue ritual; Judges additionally requires a bounded, repeatable, temporal sense (“all the days of the judge,” 2:18) absent from Romans’ once-for-all eternal salvation sense — using the identical unqualified phrase risks either collision (shamanic) or doctrinal confusion (implying eternal salvation is repeatable). | Anchor every occurrence to (a) the LORD as agent and (b) an explicit temporal boundary marker (“tas li ntawd thaum tus Txiav Txim tseem tsim sia nyob,” or equivalent) distinguishing this bounded physical rescue from the gospel’s permanent salvation. |
J6 tso Vajtswv tseg (forsake) | Must denote decisive desertion, not mere forgetting — but Hmong has several near-synonyms for “leave/abandon” of varying strength, risking drift toward a softer word in oral paraphrase. | Fix tso Vajtswv tseg as the single permitted rendering for azav/apostasy-desertion across the whole book; forbid weaker “tsis nco qab” (forgot) or generic “tso tseg” without the Vajtswv object as substitutes. |
J8 tus Txiav Txim (judge) | Dual judicial + military-deliverer office has no single Hmong village-office analogue (tu plaub = dispute-adjudicator only). | Mandatory teaching note at first occurrence per lesson module explaining the dual office; never allow the term to stand alone without at least one accompanying deliverer-verb (cawm, cawm dim, tua rog) in the same teaching unit. |
Cross-doctrine note: Doctrine 1 is the doctrinal frame binding the whole book; its vocabulary is inherited almost entirely from Romans (sin, wrath, salvation) but requires narrative-cyclical reinforcement (serial/repetition markers) that Romans’ more linear argument did not require.
Doctrine 2 — The Absence of a Righteous King (“everyone did what was right in his own eyes”)
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
#43 txhua tus ua raws li nws pom zoo rau nws tus kheej (the refrain) | Hmong customary clan/village governance already operates through decentralized elder consensus with no single monarch; the refrain risks being heard as a neutral, even positive, description of ordinary self-governing community life rather than the book’s own indictment of covenant chaos. | Reproduce the refrain character-for-character at every occurrence (17:6, 18:1 partial, 19:1 partial, 21:25) — no stylistic variation permitted, exactly matching the Romans TM’s treatment of fixed collocations — and pair every occurrence with explicit contrastive teaching against Vajtswv txoj kev ncaj ncees [ROM] (righteousness of God), never left to stand as a bare narrative aside. |
J20 / #35 vaj ntxwv (king) | Shares the root morpheme with lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (Kingdom of God) [ROM]; risk that critique of human kingship (Abimelech, ch.9) bleeds into an implied critique of God’s own kingship, or conversely that Gideon’s refusal of kingship (8:22-23) is read as anti-monarchic in principle rather than a specific christological placeholder (only God/God’s anointed should reign). | Always explicitly distinguish vaj ntxwv (human, contingent, often failed office) from lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (God’s own reign) in any single teaching unit that uses both; never let the two compound roots stand unexplained side by side. |
| — (missing) explicit theological vocabulary for “righteous king” as a forward-looking messianic category | Judges never uses a term equivalent to Romans’ Vajtswv txoj kev ncaj ncees applied to a coming king; this is a genuine gap between the OT narrative’s implicit need and later canonical fulfillment (Davidic covenant, ultimately Christ). | Recommend a new curriculum-level (not TM-level) bridging phrase for teaching notes only: “tus vaj ntxwv ncaj ncees” (a righteous king) — NOT a fixed TM term, explicitly flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED: forward-pointing typological phrase, not a Hebrew-lexeme translation] wherever used, since it names an absence/longing rather than translating an existing word. |
Doctrine 3 — God’s Grace through Flawed Deliverers
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
J8 tus Txiav Txim (judge) + J16/#31 tus cawm (deliverer) | Both terms name an office/function, not the moral character of the office-holder; Hmong hearers accustomed to village-leader vocabulary may assume moral exemplarity is implied by the title, which Judges systematically subverts (Gideon’s ephod, Jephthah’s vow, Samson’s compromises). | Every lesson introducing a specific judge must pair the office-term with an explicit statement that God’s use of the person does not endorse every action of the person — a structural teaching note, not a lexical fix. |
txoj kev khuv leej (mercy) [ROM] | Clean reuse, but risks being read as earned by Israel’s cry (2:18) rather than triggered by it — the distinction between mercy’s occasion (suffering, groaning) and its cause (God’s own character) must be actively maintained since Hmong custom often frames spirit-relief as responsive to correct ritual performance. | Reuse txoj kev khuv leej unchanged; add a fixed teaching clause: “tus Tswv khuv leej vim nws lub siab dawb siab zoo, tsis yog vim lawv tau ua ib yam dab tsi tsim nyog” (God is merciful because of his own gracious character, not because they did something deserving it). |
J19 efauj (Gideon’s ephod), J23 lus cog tseg (rau Vajtswv) (Jephthah’s vow) | Both narratives depict a flawed deliverer’s own lapse becoming a snare, a doctrinally delicate double movement (grace working through the person, judgment falling on the person’s specific sin) that a single term cannot carry. | Treat as narrative-teaching load, not lexical — mandatory [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] flag already logged in 08_core_glossary.md/registry for J23 must be preserved; do not attempt a lexical solution to what is a narrative-theological complexity. |
Doctrine 4 — Apostasy and Covenant Unfaithfulness
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
J4 Npa-as (Baal), J5 cov Atalauj (Ashtaroth) | Direct structural parallel to Hmong nature-spirit and female-ancestral-spirit veneration; the single greatest doctrinal collision risk in the book after the Spirit-terms. | Transliterate (not paraphrase — see §3); mandatory contrast-teaching at every occurrence, never introduced without a same-unit statement that Baal/Ashtaroth-worship and Hmong traditional spirit-veneration share the same structural error (worship diverted from the one true God to created/imagined powers), without claiming Hmong ancestors literally worshiped Baal by that name. |
J26/#41 dab mlom hauv tsev (household teraphim) | The single closest formal-structural parallel to a Hmong household spirit-shrine/ancestral altar (xwm kab) anywhere in the Judges vocabulary set; narrative frames it as catastrophic apostasy (chs.17-18), not benign domestic devotion. | Mandatory explicit-contrast teaching at every occurrence; never permit the term to be introduced as merely “a household object” without the covenant-violation frame attached in the same sentence or immediately adjacent clause. |
| #22 (spiritual harlotry metaphor) | Sexual explicitness of the Hebrew metaphor sits against the mandated formal/reverent register; risk of either (a) literalistic misreading as an accusation of literal temple prostitution, or (b) over-sanitizing until the accusatory force of “covenant betrayal” is lost entirely. | Retain the dignified periphrasis already fixed in the registry; mandatory teaching note explaining the marriage-covenant metaphor at every occurrence; never omit the metaphor’s explanation for reading-level “simplification” per §6 of the governing AI requirements convention (once adopted formally into this book’s Phase 2 requirements doc). |
pehawm / pab teev (worship/serve) [ROM] | Judges uses the identical verb for true worship of the LORD and false worship of Baal (2:7 vs. 2:11) — an exact match to the verb’s real Hmong dual-use (pehawm Vajtswv vs. pehawm dab), meaning there is zero lexical distance between true and false worship at the verb level. | The object, never the verb, must carry the entire doctrinal weight; enforce the mandatory object-anchoring rule with double strictness in Judges (never permit a bare pehawm even in poetic/elliptical narrative summary, e.g., 2:11’s “pehawm cov Npa-as” must never be shortened to bare “pehawm” in any teaching excerpt). |
Doctrine 5 — The Spirit’s Empowering of Judges
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Spirit of the LORD) [ROM, elevated risk] | Romans’ baseline already flags the Critical collision with the animistic multi-soul concept; Judges adds a doctrinally new dimension absent from Romans — episodic, task-specific coming (3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 14:19, 15:14) and eventual departure (16:20) — which, if untaught, could imply to Hmong hearers (already primed by animistic multi-soul/spirit-departure concepts, e.g., poob plig, “losing one’s soul”) that the NT’s permanent Spirit-indwelling (Romans 8) is similarly revocable. | Reuse Vaj Ntsuj Plig unchanged with the mandatory “Vaj” prefix at every occurrence; every episodic-coming and the departure verse (16:20) must carry a mandatory cross-reference teaching note explicitly distinguishing OT conditional/task empowering from NT permanent indwelling, routed to human theologian review without exception (per doctrine registry routing rule, §below). |
J21 ib tug ntsuj phem (evil spirit, 9:23) | Deliberately built without “Vaj” prefix and without the dab root, but sits in the same lexical family (ntsuj) as both the Holy Spirit term and the anthropological soul term, risking three-way confusion (Holy Spirit / human soul / evil spirit) if the surrounding context is thin. | Never use ntsuj phem without an explicit statement that this spirit acts under God’s sovereign command as an instrument of judgment between two already-wicked human parties — never as an autonomous force; keep visually/lexically distinct from both Vaj Ntsuj Plig and bare ntsuj plig in every teaching unit. |
J24/#39 tus raug cais tseg rau tus Tswv (Nazirite vow) | No exact Hmong customary analogue for a lifelong ritual-abstention vow; comprehension gap elevated to Medium-High because its violation (Samson) drives the Spirit’s-departure narrative. | Introduce with a first-occurrence explanatory gloss (three elements: no wine, no haircut, no corpse-contact) at 13:5; do not re-explain at every subsequent chapter, but do reconnect explicitly to the Spirit-departure verse at 16:17-20. |
Doctrine 6 — Moral Decline and the Need for a Righteous King
| Available Hmong Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
J11/#26 ua phem dua lawv tej niam tej txiv (generational moral decline) | The compounding, worsening-across-generations sense must be actively reasserted at each recurrence (3:7ff., 4:1, 6:1, 8:33-34, 10:6, 13:1) — Hmong narrative convention, by contrast, often treats a repeating refrain as static/cyclical rather than a downward spiral, risking the doctrine collapsing into “the same thing kept happening” rather than “things kept getting worse.” | Never abbreviate the formula for brevity at any recurrence; where space is genuinely constrained (e.g., quiz options, headers), use the shorter but still comparative form “phem dua ib tiam dhau ib tiam” (worse from one generation to the next) rather than dropping the comparative element entirely. |
| #43 (refrain, see Doctrine 2) | Same term serves both doctrines; risk of teaching it only once under Doctrine 2 and never reconnecting it to the moral-decline trajectory under Doctrine 6 (chs. 19-21 as the narrative floor of the decline). | Cross-reference explicitly: teaching units on chs. 19-21 (Levite’s concubine, civil war, forced marriages) must reconnect back to the refrain and to J11’s compounding-decline sense, not treat the Gibeah atrocity as an isolated incident. |
— (missing) a single unifying Hmong term for “societal/covenantal moral collapse” as a category (distinct from individual txhaum) | Hmong vocabulary readily names individual wrongdoing but has no single fixed compound for a whole society’s structural covenant collapse (chs. 19-21’s scope) as distinct from personal sin. | Do not invent a new fixed TM term for this; instead require narrative-summary teaching prose (not a lexical item) at the close of the book’s coverage that names the trajectory using already-fixed vocabulary in combination: kev txhaum + ua phem dua lawv tej niam tej txiv + txhua tus ua raws li nws pom zoo rau nws tus kheej, read together as the book’s cumulative diagnosis. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Genuine Missing-Vocabulary Gaps (comprehension-level; no competing religious referent)
These are cases where Hmong simply lacks a corresponding lexeme or customary category — the risk is comprehension failure, not doctrinal collision, and the fix is explanatory gloss/teaching note, not fencing.
| Gap | Terms Affected | Fix Type |
|---|---|---|
| No single Hmong verb spans both “inherit” and “forcibly dispossess” | J12 ntiab tawm / kav tau (yarash) | Context-dependent dual rendering; no collision. |
| No customary office combining judicial adjudication + military deliverance | J8 tus Txiav Txim | Mandatory dual-sense teaching note at first occurrence per unit. |
| No customary lifelong ritual-abstention vow category | J24 tus raug cais tseg rau tus Tswv (Nazirite) | First-occurrence explanatory gloss (13:5). |
| No female-prophetic-office customary analogue | J17 tus poj niam cev Vajtswv lus (prophetess) | Teach as same office-family as male prophets; comprehension gap only. |
| No customary secondary-wife legal category matching pilegesh exactly | #44 tus poj hluas / tus niam yau (concubine) | Comprehension gloss; handle ch.19 narrative with care per candor mandate. |
| No olive-tree-style single unifying term for OT self-binding covenant oath vs. human rash vow, distinct grammatically | J2 kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv) vs. J9/#24 cog lus twv vs. J23/#38 lus cog tseg (rau Vajtswv) | Three distinct fixed phrases maintained (God’s own oath / general human oath / rash vow-to-God); do not merge. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (require active fencing — genuine collision, not mere gap)
These are the reverse problem: a Hmong word or word-family is available and natural, but it is already “occupied” by a specific traditional-religious referent that must be actively fenced off (qualifier, forbidden-substitution rule, or mandatory co-text) rather than left to the reader’s inference.
Neighborhood A — the dab (spirit) family. Contains: dab (spirit/false god generic), dab mlom (idol) [ROM], dab mlom hauv tsev (household teraphim, J26/#41), dab qhua (ancestral spirit-messenger — collision zone for J3/#18 Angel of the LORD), dab teb / dab toj roob (field/mountain spirits — collision zone for J4 Baal), pehawm dab (spirit-worship — collision zone for the shared verb pehawm). Fencing rule: every member of this family that names a biblical referent must carry an explicit object/qualifier distinguishing it from the traditional referent sharing the same root; none may ever stand unqualified when the referent is the biblical concept.
Neighborhood B — the hmoov (fate/fortune) family. Contains: koob hmoov (fortune/blessing — PERMANENTLY FORBIDDEN for grace [ROM]), and by extension any curse/blessing vocabulary built on the same root. Fencing rule, extended for Judges: J18/#33 (curse, arar) was already resolved in the prior glossary/registry by deliberately choosing raug foom tsis zoo, avoiding the hmoov root entirely. This analysis reaffirms and closes that decision: no future Judges curriculum content may render any blessing/curse/fortune concept — including Deborah’s Song’s blessings and curses (ch.5) and the Mizpah oath-curse (ch.21) — using any hmoov-root compound. This extends the Romans baseline’s permanent prohibition (previously scoped to grace only) to the entire curse/blessing semantic field within this book.
Neighborhood C — the ntsuj (spirit/soul) family. Contains: Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Holy Spirit, mandatory Vaj prefix) [ROM], bare ntsuj plig (anthropological human soul) [ROM], ib tug ntsuj phem (evil spirit sent by God, J21/#36). Fencing rule: these three must never be typeset or taught adjacent to one another without an explicit disambiguating clause; the “Vaj” prefix is the sole formal marker separating the divine Person from the other two, so proofreading for the prefix’s presence/absence is a Critical-severity quality gate specific to this book (Judges uses all three forms across chs. 3-16, unlike Romans which never needs the evil-spirit term at all).
Neighborhood D — the kevcai (custom/rite) family. Contains: Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) (Mosaic Law) [ROM, not heavily active in Judges’ narrative but latent in every appeal to covenant obligation], kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv) (covenant, J2/#17), kev cai dab qhuas (religion/spirit-worship-customs, the forbidden-collapse target). Fencing rule: any reference to Israel’s covenant obligations under Judges 2:1-2, 20 must use kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv), never a bare kevcai term, to avoid collapsing covenant relationship into generic ancestral custom-keeping — the same collision the Romans baseline already documented for the Law, now extended proactively to the covenant-noun itself even though Judges rarely cites Mosaic Law by name.
Neighborhood E — the fij (sacrificial offering) family. Not heavily active in the core passage but latent throughout: household/idol-offering contexts (chs. 17-18 imply cultic offerings alongside the teraphim/ephod) and any future cross-reference to the Romans-baseline living_sacrifice/propitiation entries. Fencing rule: if any Judges lesson draws a comparison to Christ’s atonement or to Romans 12’s living sacrifice (a natural typological move — Gideon’s altar, Jephthah’s vow-as-perverted-sacrifice), it must reuse the Romans-baseline fixed strings exactly (qhov theej txhoj kev txhaum; khoom fij uas muaj txoj sia nyob) and must not invent a new fij-family compound specific to Judges.
Neighborhood F — the divination/guidance family. Contains: thov Vajtswv qhia (inquire of God, #45), contrasted against txiv neeb (shaman) practice of consulting spirits for guidance/omens. Fencing rule: every occurrence of legitimate inquiry-of-God language (ch.20) must explicitly name the means (priest, Ark, God’s appointed channel) to distinguish it from shamanic divination, since the underlying human need (seeking guidance in crisis) is genuinely and dangerously similar across both systems — this is a stricter fencing requirement than a mere comprehension gap because the two practices can otherwise look procedurally identical from the outside.
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
Baal (Ba'al) | Transliterate → Npa-as (J4) | A paraphrase (“a false god” / “a nature-spirit”) would erase the proper name and prevent the specific, named contrast-teaching the doctrine requires; transliteration preserves it as a historical proper name (parallel to Yexus Khetos convention) while the teaching layer, not the lexical layer, supplies the contrast with Hmong nature-spirit veneration. |
Ashtaroth (Ashtarot) | Transliterate → cov Atalauj (J5) | Same rationale as Baal; preserves the proper-name status and allows the male/female deity-pair structure of the apostasy to remain visible in the text itself. |
Ephod (ephod) | Transliterate + mandatory gloss → efauj (J19/#34) | No native Hmong cultic-garment/oracle-object category exists; a paraphrase risks either over-specifying (calling it “a garment,” losing the oracle-object sense) or under-specifying (calling it merely “an idol,” collapsing Gideon’s and Micah’s specific object into the generic dab mlom and losing the narrative’s specific irony that a formerly faithful judge’s own war-trophy becomes a snare). Transliteration with a first-occurrence gloss preserves the specific referent while the teaching layer supplies the contrast with the legitimate priestly ephod. |
Teraphim (teraphim) | Paraphrase, not transliteration → dab mlom hauv tsev (J26/#41) | Unlike Baal/Ashtaroth/ephod, teraphim names a category of object (household idol-figures) rather than a specific deity or a wholly unfamiliar cultic-garment type; Hmong already has a directly corresponding functional category (household spirit-shrine objects), making a transparent descriptive paraphrase both accurate and more immediately teachable than an opaque loanword — the collision this creates (Neighborhood A above) is a feature, not a bug, since the whole pedagogical point is to make hearers recognize the parallel to their own household-shrine practice and see it as the same category of covenant violation. |
Nazirite (nazir) | Paraphrase, not transliteration → tus raug cais tseg rau tus Tswv (J24/#39) | Names a function (consecration/separation) rather than a proper name or wholly unfamiliar concrete object; a descriptive paraphrase is more immediately comprehensible than a loanword and carries no collision risk requiring the “keep it foreign to avoid false-equivalence” logic that governed Baal/Ashtaroth. |
Angel of the LORD (mal'akh YHWH) | Paraphrase (compound), not transliteration → tus Tim Tswv ntawm tus Tswv (J3/#18) | “Angel” as a bare transliterated loanword would be opaque and would forfeit the chance to build the term compositionally from already-trusted vocabulary (tus Tswv); the compound paraphrase keeps the messenger explicitly subordinate to and sent from tus Tswv, which is the safest available strategy given the unresolved Christophany question (flagged for theologian review, not resolved lexically here). |
Concubine (pilegesh) | Paraphrase → tus poj hluas / tus niam yau (#44) | Names a legal-social status with a rough functional Hmong analogue (secondary/junior wife terminology); transliteration would be both unnecessary and unhelpfully opaque for a comprehension-gap (not collision-driven) term. |
Evil spirit (ruach ra'ah) | Paraphrase (deliberately non-standard compound) → ib tug ntsuj phem (J21/#36) | Deliberately avoids both the Vaj Ntsuj Plig prefix and the dab root; a transliteration option was considered and rejected because it would fail to signal the term’s grammatical kinship to (and necessary distinction from) the Holy Spirit vocabulary, which is best managed through a controlled native compound rather than a loanword. |
| Shophet / Judge (office) | Paraphrase → tus Txiav Txim (J8/#23) | A transliterated loanword would carry zero inherent meaning for a first-time Hmong hearer and would forfeit the (partial) bridge to the existing tu plaub dispute-adjudication concept, which — while incomplete — is the best available entry point for teaching the office’s judicial half before extending it to the military-deliverer half. |
| ”Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (refrain) | Paraphrase, fixed collocation → txhua tus ua raws li nws pom zoo rau nws tus kheej (#43) | A refrain of this doctrinal weight cannot be a loanword; must be a native, fully comprehensible, fixed Hmong sentence reproduced identically at every occurrence — transliteration is not applicable to a full clause of this kind. |
General transliteration policy for this book: transliterate only (a) proper names of foreign deities where preserving historical/narrative specificity outweighs comprehension cost (Baal, Ashtaroth), and (b) concrete cultic objects with no native functional analogue at all (ephod). Paraphrase everything else — offices, functions, categories of object with a native functional analogue, and all fixed doctrinal refrains. This mirrors, and does not contradict, the Romans baseline’s own policy (which transliterated Yexus Khetos, Abba, and proper/place names but paraphrased doctrinal vocabulary throughout).
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (Full Book)
Ranked by combined severity of (a) doctrinal load-bearing weight, (b) specificity and directness of the traditional-religion collision, and (c) likelihood of accidental error in ordinary curriculum production (e.g., dropped qualifier, omitted teaching note).
-
Vaj Ntsuj Pligprefix omission on any episodic Spirit-coming/departure verse (3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 14:19, 15:14, 16:20). — Highest risk: a single dropped “Vaj” collapses the divine Spirit into the animistic multi-soul concept, and the episodic-coming/departure pattern is uniquely susceptible to being read (via the Hmongpoob plig/soul-loss concept) as proof that the Spirit’s presence is as fragile and losable as a human soul. Mandatory human theologian review, no exceptions. [Doctrine 5] -
Baal/Ashtaroth worship (J4, J5) taught without explicit, same-unit contrast to Hmong nature/ancestral-spirit veneration. — The single most structurally exact traditional-religion parallel in the book; omission of the contrast teaching risks either (a) hearers concluding their own ancestral practices are literally condemned by name (over-reach) or (b) hearers concluding Baal-worship is a quaint foreign practice unrelated to their own (under-reach), both doctrinally damaging in opposite directions. [Doctrine 4]
-
Household teraphim (J26/#41) introduced as a neutral domestic object rather than a covenant violation. — Nearly identical in real-world function to a Hmong household spirit-shrine/ancestral altar (
xwm kab); the risk is not comprehension but validation — a curriculum writer summarizing Micah’s household cult descriptively, without moral framing, could inadvertently read as endorsing the practice as ordinary piety. [Doctrine 4] -
pehawm(worship/serve) used without its object stated in narrative summary or quiz-option abbreviation. — Unlike most Romans-baseline terms, this verb is identically used in-text for both true and false worship (2:7 vs. 2:11), giving zero lexical safety margin; any elliptical shortening in a quiz option or header (“cov Yixalayees pehawm…”) without completing the object is doctrinally unsafe regardless of surrounding context. [Doctrine 4] -
Jephthah’s rash vow (J23/#38) taught, even inadvertently, as a commendable model of costly devotion rather than a cautionary account. — The narrative’s own ambivalence (Jephthah is listed among the judges, yet the vow’s fulfillment is horrific) makes this the single highest risk of a curriculum-writer’s own drift into validating a destructive practice; compounded by genuine Hmong customary-vow resonance. Mandatory
[TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]flag must never be silently dropped from any lesson touching 11:29-40. [Doctrine 3] -
The Spirit’s departure from Samson (16:20) taught without the mandatory OT-episodic vs. NT-permanent contrast clause. — Directly adjacent in risk to #1 above but specifically dangerous for pastoral/discipleship application: a hearer could conclude a believer today can similarly lose the Spirit through sin, contradicting the Romans-baseline permanent-indwelling doctrine this same Language Package already establishes. [Doctrine 5, cross-referencing Romans baseline]
-
The refrain “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (#43) reproduced with any wording variation across occurrences, or taught as a neutral description of decentralized governance. — Fixed-collocation risk (any variant drift defeats the refrain’s rhetorical function across the book) compounded by a specific Hmong cultural risk (existing elder-consensus governance without a monarch could make the refrain sound like ordinary, even admirable, communal self-rule rather than the indictment Scripture intends). [Doctrines 2, 6]
-
kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv(wrath) taught without the “not appeasable by ritual” contrast note, especially adjacent to Baal-worship narratives where ritual appeasement of a rival deity is literally depicted in the surrounding text. — The narrative proximity of true divine wrath and false ritual-appeasement practice in the same chapters (2, 6, 10) elevates this beyond the Romans baseline’s already-High rating; a reader could conclude God’s wrath, like Baal’s supposed favor, is manageable through correct ritual technique. [Doctrine 1, 4] -
ib tug ntsuj phem(evil spirit, J21/#36) taught without the “acts only under God’s sovereign command” clause. — Hmong animism readily accommodates autonomous harmful spirits requiring placation or manipulation by a shaman; omitting the sovereignty clause risks reframing 9:23 as evidence that Israel’s God operates within the same multi-agent spirit-economy as traditional religion, rather than as its sole sovereign. [Doctrine 4, 5 boundary] -
efauj(Gideon’s ephod, J19/#34) conflated with the legitimate high-priestly ephod (Exodus 28) or with the genericdab mlomidol-term. — A narrower risk than items 1-9 but doctrinally significant for Doctrine 3 (grace through flawed deliverers): failing to distinguish Gideon’s later lapse from his earlier faithful altar-destruction (6:25-32) either overstates Gideon’s failure (erasing the “grace through flawed deliverers” nuance) or understates it (erasing the warning that even a faithful deliverer can become a snare). [Doctrine 3, 4] -
thov Vajtswv qhia(inquire of God, #45) taught without explicit means-based distinction from shamanic divination. — The underlying human action (seeking guidance in a crisis) is genuinely close totxiv neebpractice from the outside; without naming the means (priest, Ark, God’s appointed channel) explicitly, the practice-level distinction collapses even though the object (the one true God) differs. [Doctrine 1 boundary] -
Curse/blessing vocabulary (J18/#33) drifting toward any
hmoov-root compound in oral paraphrase or informal teaching-note drafting. — Lower narrative frequency than items above, but the Romans baseline’s permanent, zero-tolerance prohibition onhmoov-root vocabulary for anything touching divine favor/disfavor makes any drift here an automatic Critical-tier violation regardless of how minor the specific passage (5:23, 21:18) seems. [Doctrine 1, cross-referencing Romans baselinegraceentry]
5. Full-Book Chapter Coverage Confirmation
Per the full-book-coverage mandate, this analysis confirms review of every chapter (1-21). Chapter 12 was already explicitly logged in 08_core_glossary.md Part D as reviewed with no new load-bearing vocabulary (minor judges Ibzan/Elon/Abdon; Jephthah-Ephraim conflict — reuses tus Txiav Txim, kev cawm dim, and ordinary tribal/military vocabulary already covered under chs. 4-5, 11). No additional chapters require this designation: chapters 1, 5, 7, 14, and 15 — while not separately tabled above because they introduce no additional Critical/High terms beyond those already logged under their narrative unit (e.g., ch.5 = Deborah’s Song, reusing #33 curse vocabulary and thaj av tau so; ch.7 and ch.14-15 continue the Gideon and Samson narratives under vocabulary already fixed in chs.6, 8, 13, 16 respectively) — are confirmed reviewed in full under this Step 8 pass, consistent with the coverage already established in 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json.
6. Governing Note
This analysis extends, and in no place contradicts, assets/translation_memory.json (Romans baseline), analysis/08_core_glossary.md (Judges), and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Judges). All fencing rules, transliteration decisions, and ranked risks documented here are intended to feed directly into the forthcoming Judges Phase 2 AI Translation Requirements document (parallel in structure to the Romans 12_ai_translation_requirements.md), and into a future formal TM-revision cycle admitting the Judges Part B terms as permanent entries. No rendering decision recorded here may be silently overridden by later curriculum content without a formal TM-revision review, consistent with the Romans baseline’s permanent-TM enforcement rule.