SIL Translator’s Notes on Colossians 4:3

4:3a

as you pray also for us: In the Greek text of this verse there is a word, hama, that means “together, at the same time.” The Berean Standard Bible and several other English versions have omitted this word. Paul was asking the Colossians to pray for him and his friends when they were praying for everything else. Here are some other ways to translate this word in context:

At the same time pray also for us (Good News Translation)
-or-
and include us in your prayers (Revised English Bible)

us: This referred to Paul and his friends who were with him.

4:3b

that God may open to us a door for the word: This is a figure of speech. It means, “that God will give us the opportunity to continue to preach the gospel.” This same figure of speech is also found in 1 Corinthians 16:9 and 2 Corinthians 2:12. Some ways to translate this are:

pray that God will make a way for us to spread his message (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
Pray that God will give us opportunities to preach the message about Christ.

4:3c

the mystery of Christ: See the note on 1:26a.

4:3d

for which: This refers back to “word” in 4:3b.

I am in chains: It is possible that Paul was bound or chained while he was in prison. However, I am in chains is probably just a figurative way to say, “I am in prison.”

So you can translate the meaning of 4:3d as

I am in prison now because I preached this message about Christ.

© 2001 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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