This was the challenge facing Bible translator Robert Moffat. In 1821, at the age of 25, Moffat set up a mission among the Tswana-speaking people of southern Africa. To learn their unwritten language, he mixed with the people. Moffat persevered and, without the aid of primers or dictionaries, eventually mastered the language, developed a written form of it, and taught some Tswana to read that script. In 1829, after working among the Tswana for eight years, he finished translating the Gospel of Luke. He later said: “I have known individuals to come hundreds of miles to obtain copies of St. Luke. . . . I have seen them receive portions of St. Luke, and weep over them, and grasp them to their bosoms, and shed tears of thankfulness, till I have said to more than one, ‘You will spoil your books with your tears.’” Moffat also told of an African man who saw a number of people reading the Gospel of Luke and asked them what they had in their possession. “It is the word of God,” they replied. “Does it speak?” the man asked. “Yes,” they said, “it speaks to the heart.”

¹⁴ Devoted translators like Moffat gave many Africans their first opportunity to communicate in writing. But the translators gave the African people an even more precious gift—the Bible in their own tongue. Moreover, Moffat introduced the divine name to the Tswana, and he used that name throughout his translation.c Thus, the Tswana referred to the Bible as “the mouth of Jehovah.”—Psalm 83:18.