SIL Translator’s Notes on Ephesians 5:12

5:12

The Good News Translation translates 5:12 in parentheses:

(12 It is really too shameful even to talk about the things they do in secret.)

The thought of 5:13 connects directly with 5:11. See how you translated 5:9, which many versions also translate in parentheses. Translate 5:12 in a way that is natural for your language.

For it is shameful even to mention: The clause For it is shameful even to mention means that Christians should feel ashamed or embarrassed to even talk about the evil deeds that non-Christians do.

what the disobedient do: The word disobedient is not in the Greek text. The Greek text literally says, “being done by them” which refers to those people who do evil deeds. The Berean Standard Bible has supplied the word disobedient in order to make the pronoun “them” more explicit.

Another way you could make the pronoun “them” more explicit, is to say:

those people
-or-
those ⌊unbelieving⌋ people

in secret: In the Greek text, this is literally “the hidden/secret things.”

Here are some other ways to translate these words:

the things people do which others cannot see
-or-
the things people do when other people cannot see them

© 1999, 2019 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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