A member of the local professional football team, Jared Allen, is known for his reenactment of rodeo tying a calf whenever he sacks the opposing quarterback. What this has to do with Bible translation, I’m not sure, but it was the first image that popped into my head when I read Malachi 4.2 in the NASB:
But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.
The impish choice of “go forth and skip about” in the NASB piqued my curiosity, as frankly I would have expected the more mundane rendition of “leap about” (cf. ESV, NRSV, NIV, NLTse). The NEB/REB is perhaps a stronger fit with the rodeo image: “you will break loose like calves released from the stall.”
The underlying Hebrew verb is puwsh, which according to Strongs either means (1) to “spring about” or (2) “to scatter” or “be spread”. The Latinate translation variants, N/KJV and the Jerusalem Bible, interpret “be spread” along the lines of growing bigger, e.g. “you will grow fat like stall-fed calves”, which creates an entirely different image altogether. Veal anyone?