Who Said What Now?

Matthew 14:8


Herodias, mother of the girl, spoke to her girl and her girl spoke to Herod, "You must put the head of John the Baptist on a plate and bring it to me."

It was 6:30 in the morning. We had worked until 10 pm the night before. Instead of going back to their villages, all the men slept right there in the pavilion anxious to start first thing in the morning. However, they had stayed up until 2 am telling their wives and discussing among themselves what we had discussed in the 105 vs we had accomplished that day. So our start was a bit late. But here we were, I with a coffee in hand, them chewing beetlenut which also is a stimulant.

As I had each time, I asked them to translate the verse from their language into Tok Pisin, the trade language. But there was something fishy about the translation that got my attention.
I'm not amazingly fluent in Tok Pisin so there's always a chance I misunderstood, but I asked them to repeat the verse.
There it was again!
Or "wasn't" as the case may be. There wasn't any reference to the girl.

"Who told Herod she wanted the head of John the Baptist?"
"Herodias wanted the head."
"But who told that to Herod?"
"Herodias."
"And what did Herodias' daughter do?"
"..."
Those who had a printing of the Tok Ples scripture referred to it.
"Herodias... told the girl... and then she told Herod."
"Who told Herod?"
And no one knew.

"Herod told the girl she could have whatever she wanted. But she wanted to make her mother happy, so asked what her mother wanted. Her mother told her she wanted John the Baptist's head, so the girl went back to Herod and told him she wanted John the Baptist's head."
"So Herodias whispered it to her daughter. Herod didn't hear her."
And that's where the miscommunication came in. Indeed, if Herodias had shouted across the hall and her daughter had said, yes, that's what I want, it would seem that Herodias did tell Herod.
So to fix the confusion, we split the sentence into two sentences. First Herodias speaks to her daughter. Then her daughter speaks to Herod.

Everyone agreed that this made the translation clear and it was still sweet to the ear.

Be sure to check out the gateway to all the other tales of our comprehension checking.