3:12a

Here, and in 3:13, Paul prayed for the Thessalonians.

the Lord: This refers to the Lord Jesus.

cause you to increase and overflow with love: The Greek verbs pleonazō, which the Berean Standard Bible translates as cause…to increase, and perisseuō, which the Berean Standard Bible translates as cause…to…overflow, mean almost the same thing. The second verb emphasizes the first one. The Berean Standard Bible has used a metaphor here that means in this context, “May God help you to increasingly love others, like someone filling a cup with water until it is full and it overflows.”

3:12b

just as our love for you overflows: In Greek, this part of the verse literally says “and we to you.” Some words are implied here that may need to be made explicit in your translation, as in the Berean Standard Bible. Paul was probably asking the Lord to increase the Thessalonians’ love for others in the same way that the love of Paul and his companions for the Thessalonians was increasing.

© 2002 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.