Literally, this verse could be rendered as follows: “Brothers, indeed the wish of my heart and my prayer to God for them is for salvation.” The Good News Translation renders the nouns “wish” and “prayer” and the noun phrase “for salvation” as verbs: I wish … I pray … might be saved. Moreover, the pronoun “them” has been made explicit, as with other translations: my own people (King James Version “Israel”; Jerusalem Bible “the Jews”). Finally, the Greek particle men (rendered “indeed” in the literal translation) has the force of strengthening the impact of Paul’s wish and prayer; in the Good News Translation this force is carried through by the word how (how I wish…!).

The exclamations introduced by how may be transformed into strong affirmations—for example, “I wish very much” and “I pray very much.”

One must not assume that intensity of wishing can always be expressed by a phrase such as with all my heart. In some languages the equivalent is simply “I do wish very, very much” or “I wish most strongly.”

It may be essential in some instances to indicate clearly that my own people refers not to Paul’s personal family but to his race. Therefore one may use “my own people the Jews” or “the Jews, who are my own people.”

There may be special problems involved in the passive expression might be saved. One would not want to make this an active by making God merely the subject of saved, as “that God would save my own people the Jews.” That would imply that in some way God had not been sufficiently active in his desire or intent to save the Jews. One can, however, employ a type of substitute passive in a phrase such as “experience salvation,” “experience how God can save them,” or “experience God’s saving them.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1973. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .