The translation committee judged that to render the best sense of these words according to the context was more important than to produce a strictly literal translation. Even so, the New World Translation is as consistent as possible in rendering Hebrew and Greek words into the target language.

Because they agree with the approach taken by its translation committee, as stated in the foreword to the first English edition: “We offer no paraphrase of the Scriptures. Our endeavor all through has been to give as literal a translation as possible, where modern English idiom allows and where a literal rendition does not for any clumsiness hide the thought.”