SIL Translator’s Notes on Philippians 4:9

4:9

Scholars do not agree about how the first four verbs in 4:9 (“learned,” “received,” “heard,” “seen”) connect together. There are three possibilities:

(1) There are two pairs of verbs. The first two verbs refer to the instructions Paul gave the Philippians when he was away from them. The last two verbs may refer to what the Philippians learned from Paul when he was with them. (Good News Translation, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible, God’s Word, New Century Version)

(2) The four verbs are all separate and do not fit into any smaller group. (King James Version, Revised Standard Version)

(3) The first three verbs go together, and the last one is by itself. (Berean Standard Bible, New International Version)

It is recommended that you follow the first option as it has the strongest support from commentaries (1).

4:9a

Whatever you have learned or received: This refers to the things the Philippians had learned and accepted from Paul. Some versions have combined this into one phrase, for example:

the teachings I gave you (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
all you learned from me (New Living Translation (2004))

4:9b

heard from me, or seen in me: This refers to the messages the Philippians heard Paul preach and the things they saw him do while he was with them.

in me: Paul was telling the believers at Philippi how he had acted when he was among them. They saw in what he did an example of each of the qualities he described in 4:8. The phrase in me is thus related in meaning to all four verbs “learned,” “received,” “heard,” and “seen,” but grammatically it is connected just to “seen.” It may be necessary to supply “from me” with the other three verbs, as the Berean Standard Bible has done.

put it into practice: Paul was asking them to follow his example, to obey his teaching and to imitate how he had acted.

4:9c

And: That is, “as a result of doing all this.”

the God of peace will be with you: God would give the Philippian believers peace of heart and peace with one another if they would follow the instructions that Paul had been giving them.

the God of peace: This means “the God who gives peace” (Good News Translation, God’s Word, Contemporary English Version, New Century Version).

© 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.

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