stand firm in faith . . . not stand at all

There is a play-on-words in Hebrew in this verse: loʾtaʾaminu (you will not believe) and loʾteʾamenu (you shall not be established). Both believe and be established come from the same Hebrew verb, meaning “be firm.” Translators should try to preserve this play-on-words even though the overall meaning may suffer slightly; for example, New American Bible has “Unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm.” Good News Translation also tries to retain the wordplay with “If your faith is not enduring, you will not endure.” (Source: Ogden / Sterk 2011)

The English New Revised Standard as well as its updated edition and the New International Version recreate the word play in this manner:
“If you do not stand firm in faith,
you shall not stand at all.”

The German Gute Nachricht (Good News) translation uses a different word play by repeating the words “ihr,” “nicht,” and “bleibt”:
wenn ihr nicht bei ihm bleibt, dann bleibt ihr überhaupt nicht (“if you don’t stay with him, then you won’t stay at all”)

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