What does "se" mean in Micah 6:8, "Ya se te ha declarado..."?
What is the purpose of "se" in the following text from Micah 6:8 (Nueva Versión Internacional)?
¡Ya se te ha declarado lo que es bueno!
Ya se te ha dicho lo que de ti espera el Señor
It doesn't seem like this is "declararse" or "decirse." But the passive "se" doesn't seem to fit either.
Note that the RVR1960 doesn't include "se":
Oh hombre, él te ha declarado lo que es bueno, y qué pide Jehová de ti
Why did the translators of the NVI include "se" in this verse?
2 answers
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I speak Spanish well, but not Hebrew.
As user7078 suggested, the sentence as translated in the NVI says
"Already it has been declared to you what is good. Already it has been told to you what J-h requires from you: etc..."
"It has been declared" is a good translation because הִגִּ֥יד, according to wiktionary means simply "to declare", and the person is only specified later in the sentence.
Mechon-mamre gives a similar rendition:
It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the LORD doth require of thee: only to do...
Biblehub's interlineal may be helpful to show the non-English syntax of the original, and how alike English and Spanish are by comparison.
Unlike the other answerer, I speak Hebrew well but not much Spanish. Hopefully between the two of us we can resolve this question sufficiently.
The original Hebrew reads,
הגיד לך אדם מה טוב ומה ה׳ דרש ממך
which I will translate as literally as possible as:
It has been told to you, Man, that which is good and that which the L-rd seeks from you.
The word הגיד is in passive tense, "It has been told." So I suspect the phrase Ya se te ha declarado is the translation of הגיד לך, "To you has it been stated." I'll leave it to the Spanish experts to break it down further.
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