This verse summarizes and concludes the section which begins at 2.17. In the first part of the verse, Paul focuses on his own experience, but by the end of the verse he seems to be associating himself as usual with the other two men who have shared his work. (New English Bible translates otherwise.) Here, in contrast to verse 1, the transitional that is why points backwards to the reason Paul has just indicated. I had to send Timothy is implied. The Greek has simply “I sent (him),” but most translations supply “Timothy”; “had to” is less essential; Bijbel in Gewone Taal restructures: “So I could hold out no longer, and therefore obtained information about your faith.” The “know” of King James Version and Revised Standard Version fails to bring out a distinction between the words for “know” used here and in verse 3-4. Here it is a question of “getting to know” or “finding out” something.
The expression I had to send Timothy should not be translated in such a way as to imply that someone compelled Paul to send Timothy. The compulsion was born of Paul’s own feelings and love for the Thessalonians. Therefore, one can often translate more effectively as “that is why I felt I must send Timothy.”
I could not bear it any longer is a direct reflection of the first sentence in 3.1. Again, this is a reference to Paul’s not being able to endure longer his absence from or lack of information about the Thessalonians. In this instance one may translate “I could not continue any longer not knowing about you.”
About your faith is sufficiently clear in English, but Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch makes the phrase rather more explicit: “how it stands” (that is, what the position is) “about your faith.” Paul is here not so concerned about the specific content of the faith which the Thessalonians had, but about how they were continuing in their trust and confidence in Jesus Christ. This may be rendered as “to find out how you were progressing in your trusting Christ,” or “to know how you were making out in your faith in Christ.”
There is no serious doubt about the connection of 5b (surely it could not be…!) with what precedes, but Paul does not put it into words. Many translators supply a verb indicating anxiety: New English Bible “fearing that the tempter might have tempted you”; Barclay “for I was worried in case the tempter had tempted you” (cf. Zürcher Bibel Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch Bible en français courant La Sainte Bible: Nouvelle version Segond révisée Jerusalem Bible Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). Good News Translation‘s exclamation conveys the implied emotion, but perhaps overstates Paul’s confidence. Another possibility is to transform the original indirect question into a direct one: “What if the tempter…?” or “Could it be that the tempter…?”
“The tempter might have tempted” provokes the question: “What else would one expect the tempter to do?” How is the translator to avoid the flatness and redundancy of this expression? The question is not only stylistic; it is a question about what precisely Paul meant. One partial answer is that he was using “the Tempter” as a proper name or title of Satan (in the same way as “the Baptizer” became a title of John the Baptist). That is why Good News Translation (cf. Bible en français courant Biblia Dios Habla Hoy) has the Devil, and Bible de Jérusalem and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible have “the Tempter” with explanatory notes. A second factor is that the verb tempted, in the mood and tense used here, implies a real event at a specific point of time, not something like “lest perchance the devil might tempt you.” This is brought our by Good News Translation‘s pluperfect had tempted, and still more clearly by Bible de Jérusalem‘s “already.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch‘s “the tempter could have brought you to (a) fall” makes explicit the fear that the Thessalonians had not only been tempted, but that they had given in to the temptation. This meaning is not normally included in the meaning of “tempt,” but the last part of the verse virtually demands it here. One other possible rendering is: “What if the devil had tempted you in such a way as to make all our work useless?” The lack of explicit connections in this verse reflects the tension of the situation. Even the memory of his anxiety seems to start Paul’s thought moving faster than he can dictate.
It is extremely difficult in some languages to render the type of exclamation occurring in the last sentence of verse 5, Surely it could not be that the Devil had tempted you, and all our work had been for nothing! This exclamation reflects his deep concern. Accordingly, it may be necessary to use a direct statement, as in the Greek text, introduced by a verb of “worry,” “concern,” or “constant thinking about,” for example, “I could not keep from worrying that the Devil had tempted you and all our work had been for nothing,” or “I kept asking myself whether perhaps the Devil had tempted you….”
Work (cf. 1.3) is a word which implies costly effort (cf. Barclay “hard work”); it should not be confused with the current usage in which “the work” becomes a mere synonym for church activities in general. For nothing (see the notes on 2.1) means here “unproductive,” “fruitless,” with the additional component of a change of situation, in which the evangelists’ work is made useless or “reduced to nothing” (La Sainte Bible: Nouvelle version Segond révisée). Phillips‘ translation, “to make sure that the tempter’s activities had not destroyed our work,” is excellent and natural English, but it disguises the fact that the English word “work” can mean both labor, the act of working, and the product of that activity (cf. “handiwork”). In the first sense, work cannot be undone, yet this is the primary meaning of the Greek word Paul uses. In some languages, though not in English, it may be necessary to preserve the distinction by some such expression as “destroy the results of all our work.”
The possible fruitlessness of Paul’s activity in Thessalonica can be expressed in two different ways: (1) either as accomplishing nothing, for example, “all our work there has turned out to be nothing” or “all our work there really ended up with no results;” or (2) it can be an expression of destruction of what has been accomplished, for example, “that all our work there has been destroyed,” or “that all we did there had been ruined.”
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 .