• They Loved the Word of God
    The Watchtower—2009 | June 1

    • A Bible in a Pillow

      Two weeks after their marriage in February 1812, American missionary Adoniram Judson and his wife, Ann, embarked on a long journey, eventually settling in Burma in 1813.a They immediately applied themselves to learning Burmese, one of the world’s most difficult languages. After a few years of study, Judson wrote: “We take up a language spoken by a people on the other side of the earth, whose very thoughts run in channels diverse from ours . . . We have no dictionary, and no interpreter to explain a single word.”

      The linguistic challenges did not cause Judson to give up. He completed his Burmese translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures in June 1823. Later, Burma was plunged into war. As a suspected spy, Judson was thrown into prison, confined with three pairs of iron fetters, and fastened to a long pole to prevent him from moving. “One of the first things Mr. Judson inquired after, as soon as he and Mrs. Judson were allowed to meet and speak together in English, was the manuscript translation of the New Testament,” wrote Francis Wayland in an 1853 book on Judson’s life. Fearing that buried under the house the manuscript might be destroyed by humidity and mildew, Ann sewed it inside a pillow and brought it to her husband in prison. In spite of very difficult circumstances, the manuscript survived.

      After many months in prison, Judson was released. But his joy was short-lived. Later that same year, a violent fever seized Ann, and within a few weeks, she died. Only six months later, his daughter Maria, barely two years old, also succumbed to an incurable disease. Judson, though heartbroken, resumed his work. The entire Bible was finally completed in 1835.