The phrase as for us is a very convenient device in English for shifting focus, but some languages do not have any such mechanism. The closest equivalent may be an expression of “speaking” or “thinking,” for example, “now I want to speak about us,” or “and now think about us.”
Separated translates a strong and unusual word which literally means “orphaned,” but it can also be used to mean the separation of parents from children and a lover from his beloved. “Bereft” (Revised Standard Version Moffatt) gives the right meaning by the use of a somewhat archaic word. New English Bible‘s “you were lost to us” reverses the focus, and Barclay‘s “you and I were lost to each other” steers a middle course. Paul is referring to the moment of being torn away from his friends, not to the period of separation which followed. It may be difficult in some languages to employ a passive expression such as were separated without indicating the agents. Moreover, this separation was not a physical act of removing Paul from the people, but the persecution which forced Paul and Silas to leave (Acts 17.10). Accordingly, it may be necessary to translate “we were forced to leave you,” or “some people there made us leave you.”
For a little while does not mean that Paul had already been reunited with the Thessalonian Christians, as he makes clear in the following verses, but it indicates that he is confident that the separation will not be long. It may be difficult to translate for a little while, since we do not know specifically how much time had actually lapsed. One must certainly not give the impression that the lapsed time was merely a matter of a few days or weeks, and though Paul wishes to emphasize the relative shortness of the time, a literal translation could be quite misleading. In order to emphasize that the separation is still continuing but should not be permanent, some languages may employ a perfect tense, for example, “we have been forced to be away from you for a while.”
Not in our thoughts, of course, but only in body is (as of course indicates) an aside which is literally translated “in face, not in heart.” Moffatt appropriately used the idiom “(out of sight, not out of mind)”. Good News Translation (cf. Bible en français courant), by its use of thoughts, reminds us that in Hebrew thinking the heart was considered to be the seat of the intellect and the center of the whole personality, not primarily the seat of the emotions.
As in many instances, it may be necessary to introduce the positive statement before the negative one and to make more explicit what “body” and “thought” mean, for example, “we were only away from you as far as our bodies were concerned, but we never stopped thinking about you,” or “we ourselves were not with you, but we were always thinking about you.”
How we missed you and how hard we tried to see you again! Good News Translation effectively turns a statement into an exclamation and reverses the Greek sentence so that the longing is mentioned before the effort to which it gave rise. How hard is comparative in form (“more,” “more abundantly”), but the context shows that there is no real comparison; “more than if we had not been separated” would be nonsense. The comparative form is an idiomatic equivalent of “very” (cf. New English Bible “exceedingly anxious”). Formal equivalents such as King James Version “the more abundantly” and Revised Standard Version “the more eagerly” are misleading.
There are two problems involved in translating how we missed you. First, many languages do not use an exclamation, but prefer a type of emphatic statement, as in the Greek text. Second, this concept of “missing” must often be expressed in an idiomatic way, for example, “our heart was pained because of you,” “we hurt within ourselves because of you,” “our love for you grabbed us,” or “our insides went out to you.”
How hard we tried to see you again may likewise be changed into an emphatic statement, either of frequency, “we tried many times to see you again,” or of intensity, “we tried very much to see you again.” To see you is literally “to see your face.” Good News Translation and New English Bible eliminate the redundancy, while Revised Standard Version and Translator’s New Testament “to see you face to face” somewhat overemphasize it. In this context “see” must often be translated as “to visit,” since it is not simply sight, but more particularly fellowship, which is involved.
Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .