5:4a–b

Paul said that when Christians talk, they should not use any shameful talk. He uses three terms for shameful talk: obscenity, foolish talk and coarse joking.

5:4a

Nor: The NET Bible translates Nor as “neither.”

should there be obscenity: The word obscenity refers to talking of sexual matters or other taboo subjects in a shameful, crude way.

Here are some other ways to translate this word:

obscene stories (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
dirty stories (God’s Word)

5:4b

foolish talk: The term foolish talk means saying things that are of no good use. This does not mean talking like a person who has not been to school or who is not intelligent.

Here are some other ways to translate this term:

empty talk
-or-
flippant talk
-or-
disrespectful talk

In the OT, a fool was a person who ignored God or did not believe in God. So foolish talk may mean talking disrespectfully or lightly about serious things, making fun of God and other important things.

or crude joking: The term crude joking means “vulgar jokes,” which usually refers to jokes about sex.

In most languages there are terms for using vulgar and shameful language. You may have expressions like:

saying vulgar words
-or-
laughing about things that bring shame
-or-
telling stories that are not fit for people’s ears

General Comment on 5:4a–b

In some languages, two terms or even one generic term may be sufficient to express all the ideas in the three terms “obscenity, foolish talking and coarse joking.” For example:

don’t even talk about such things; they are no fit subjects for Christians to talk about (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)

5:4c

which are out of character: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as out of character means “not right,” or “not fitting.” It is the opposite of “proper” in 5:3a.

5:4d

but rather thanksgiving: The clause but rather thanksgiving means “instead, give thanks to God” or “instead ⌊of doing those things⌋, thank God ⌊for that which he has done for you⌋.”

Here are some other ways to translate this clause:

Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
Rather you should give thanks to God. (Good News Translation)

© 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.