This verse contains little that is new. It repeats and expands the content of verse 3, adding only “(you know) because we told you beforehand.” In the original, this new statement is emphasized by “and,” which Phillips idiomatically translates “actually we did warn you.”

Because verses 3 and 4 overlap so much, one of the stylistic problems in translation is to avoid excessive repetition of particular words. Even Good News Translation has not avoided “persecutions … persecutions … persecuted.”

Ahead of time in the original means simply “at a point of time earlier than another event”; in this context, earlier than the persecutions themselves. The same expression in English tends to mean “in advance of a fixed time,” but this is not the meaning of the Greek. Ahead of time may be rendered simply as “before it happened to you,” or “before you were caused to suffer.”

We were going to be persecuted is one way of translating a phrase which sometimes, and probably here, refers not merely to something which is going to happen in the future, but to something which has to happen (with the implication, as in verse 3, that it is part of God’s will). The same verb is used in Luke 9.31, where Good News Bible translates “… he would soon fulfill God’s purpose by dying in Jerusalem.” Good News Translation here reverses two phrases in the original, placing the semantically subordinate “as you know” before the new information “that is what happened” (exactly is implied).

The word we occurs three times in verse 4. In the first two instances Paul clearly refers to himself and his companions, but not to the Thessalonians. However, the Thessalonians are included in the third we, since they too are involved in the persecution. This distinction must be reflected in the translation in languages which distinguish between the inclusive and the exclusive first person plural.

That is exactly what happened may be rendered more specifically as “we did in fact suffer persecution.”

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .