The third negative statement, following the denial of flattery and greed, amplifies the last part of verse 4. Paul does not feel the need to repeat anything like “it is from God alone that we seek praise” (cf. Romans 2.29; John 5.41, 44). Good News Translation Knox Translator’s New Testament (cf. Bible en français courant) rightly prefer praise to “glory,” a term which is passing out of use, except in church language. Paul is referring to someone’s good opinion of a man, not to a man’s real worth. Moffatt Phillips Jerusalem Bible New English Bible Best (cf. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy Bijbel in Gewone Taal) have “honour”; Barclay has “human reputation” (but a reputation is not necessarily good!); Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch transforms the noun into a verb: “We do not want to be honored by men.”

Paul did not try to get (literally “seek”) praise, but he uses the same word in 2.20 to express the idea that, in another sense, the Thessalonians were a source of “pride” or “glory” to him. The expression to get praise from anyone is essentially a causative, and it may therefore be necessary to change the order of participants, for example, “we did not try to cause anyone to praise us,” or “we did not do things just so that people would praise us.”

On the two possible meanings of either from you or from others, see the general note on verses 3-7a. It is not necessary to specify either meaning in translation. Either from you or from others is an emphatic indication of the range of agents which might be involved in the praise. Hence, this entire verse 6 may be rendered as “We did not try to get anyone to praise us” or “… to cause anyone to praise us,” or “We did not try to get you to praise us, and we did not try to get anyone else to praise us.”

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 .

Desire, in Greek as in English, can have both a bad meaning (as here) or a good one (as in 2.17, where it refers to Paul’s longing to revisit Thessalonica). Lustful is a translation of the phrase “passion of desire.” “Passion,” like desire, does not always have a bad sense, but the context clearly requires it here. Lustful desire may be translated as “heart desire” or even “genital desire.” In some languages this desire is described as simply “a desire for sex relations,” but if this or a similar expression is used, the translation must make it clear that Paul is speaking of a wrong kind of sexual desire.

Who do not know God. The verb know is not the verb used in Romans 1.21 (“they know God”), but there is considerable overlap of meaning between them, and they cannot usually be distinguished in the translation of passages which are so similar as these. The reconciliation of these two texts is a task for the commentator rather than the translator.

The translation of who do not know God can readily lead to misunderstanding since it may imply that these persons “know nothing about God.” This is not what Paul is talking about. In this context know must refer to “experience with God” or “acknowledging God in what they do.” In some languages an appropriate equivalent may be “they do not reckon with God,” or “they do not take God into account.” That is, their behavior is without reference to God or to what he has said people should do.

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 .

For Paul, he who calls you is always God the Father (cf. 2.12; 4.7). Here, as in 23b, Paul follows Jewish practice in referring to God without naming him directly. Good News Translation reverses the order of the sentence (cf. Revised Standard Version) for two reasons. First, there is a tendency in Greek for the greatest emphasis to occur at the end of the sentence, whereas in English the greatest emphasis tends to occur at the beginning. Second, Good News Bible is able, by reversing the order, to bring out more clearly the relation of result and reason expressed in because (implicit in the text). He who calls you will do it may require some shift in tenses, since the present calls might imply that God was at that very moment calling to the Thessalonians. This is a reference to what God constantly does, but for this to refer to the specific experience of the Thessalonians, it may be necessary to use a perfective tense, for example, “he who has called you will do it.” As in other contexts, call may suggest here a wrong meaning if it is translated literally. A translation should not suggest “shouting” but “inviting,” expressed in some languages as “God who has spoken to us to become his.”

He is faithful means “he is reliable,” “he keeps his promises.” The same God is at work from the moment at which the Thessalonians are called until the coming of Christ. This may be semantically restructured as “you can always trust him,” or “you may be sure he will always do what he has said.”

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 .

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 .

In verses 16-17, the figurative language becomes even more marked. Paul draws a picture of a meeting of Jesus, first with those who have died and then with those who are still alive. The “place” of this meeting is the air (v. 17). In the Greek world view, this was a technical term for the middle level between the earth and the space in which the stars were thought to move, called “the ether.” It is not clear how far Paul shared this view of the world. He never uses the word “ether”; no one else in the New Testament uses the word “air.” When Paul uses “air,” it sometimes has a more general sense than it seems to have here. In this passage, the general picture is clear and can normally be translated without the help of cultural annotations. The dead are snatched up from the ground, and the Lord comes down from heaven to meet them in some “place” between. Expressions of space and time need not be understood literally, but they should be taken seriously in translation.

These central events are accompanied by others. The shout of command translates a single word which may also have the more general meaning of a loud cry. “It belongs to the language of sailors, hunters and jockeys” (Rigaux). It is not clear from the text who is shouting. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch makes it clear that it is God, and this makes good sense for receptor languages which prefer or require an explicit statement about the agent. Similarly, the text does not state explicitly that it is God who blows the trumpet, though this may be implied. The text states only that the trumpet belongs to God.

A literal translation of Good News Translation would be very difficult in some languages, since in them one cannot speak of shouting a command without indicating who is the agent. Furthermore, placing the phrase the shout of command immediately before the archangel’s voice might imply that it is the archangel who does the shouting. The closest equivalent in some languages is simply “God will shout a command, the archangel will speak, and people will hear God’s trumpet.” It is possible in some instances to avoid indicating the agent by introducing the sounds by the phrase “people will hear,” for example, “people will hear a loud command, the voice of the archangel, and God’s trumpet.”

Since in verse 17 it says that the believers will meet the Lord in the air, it would be wrong to translate “the Lord himself will come down” in such a way as to imply that he will come down to the surface of the earth. It is simply that “the Lord will come down out of heaven.” The translation should not specify precisely how far down he comes, though in some languages it may be useful, in order to avoid other complications, to say “will come down from heaven into the air.”

Those who have died believing in Christ is literally “the dead in Christ.” The metaphor of sleep, used in verses 13 and 15, is replaced here by the normal literal expression. The text does not focus on the fact of their having believed in Christ at the moment of death, for after death also they are “in Christ.” Paul simply means “dead Christians,” “the Christian dead.” It is most natural to connect “in Christ” with “those who have died.” The alternative construction, “those who have died rise in Christ first,” is much less likely. Throughout this passage, Paul is thinking only of Christians who have died. Good News Translation‘s to life is implied in the text. These words remind us of the literal meaning behind the metaphor of rising.

For some of the problems involved in translating who have died believing in Christ, see the note on verse 4.14.

The phrase will rise to life must be translated in many languages as simply “come back to life” or “live again.”

The temporal expression first implies a comparison, and this is brought out clearly in the beginning of verse 17, but in some languages the temporal relation is better expressed by a transitional alone, such as “then,” for example, “those believers in Christ who have died will come back to life, and then we who are living at that time….”

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 .

From this point until the end of the chapter, the focus changes. Paul’s attention is concentrated, not on himself and his companions, but on the way in which their message was received. The change of focus is marked by an emphatic pronoun: “as for you, you became imitators.”

Imitated and, still more, “imitators” (Jerusalem Bible), and “imitation” tend to include a negative component of not being real or authentic. That is not the case here. The Greek suggests an adult pupil’s relationship with his teacher, in a cultural situation in which education was not limited to formal instruction during fixed hours, but involved the sharing of a way of life. We are in the same area of meaning as example in verse 7, “come after” in Mark 1.17, and “follow” in Luke 5.11. (See also 1 Thess. 2.14; 1 Corinthians 4.16; and, more distantly, Matthew 5.48.) New English Bible has “example” here (cf. Barclay Best) and “model” in verse 7.

It may be necessary to expand the expression you imitated us and the Lord, for example, “you learned to live just as we lived and as the Lord lived,” “you followed us and the Lord in the way you lived,” or “you were like us and the Lord in the way in which you behaved.”

The Lord always means “Christ” in Paul’s writings, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The meanings of the Greek word range from “sir” to the name of God, “Yahweh.” Here it indicates the relationship of a servant to the one whom he serves and to whom he belongs, but the negative implications of “slaveholder” should be avoided. At the same time, it may be necessary to employ a pronoun to show the relationship of Lord to the believers, for example, “our Lord” or “our chief.” However, Paul always uses Lord in speaking of the risen Christ, and the translator should avoid titles which suggest merely the earthly life of Jesus.

Suffered translates a noun whose meaning, like that of the English “pressure,” extended from pressure to more general suffering or hardship. To understand suffered in the broader sense probably implied here, it may be useful to employ a phrase such as “you endured many troubles” (cf. Translator’s New Testament “the message brought you great trouble”), “you underwent much persecution,” or “you suffered many times because people were troublesome to you.” Introducing the agents of the suffering may be necessary in order to indicate that the suffering was not the result of illness, for example, “people caused you to suffer much,” or “… to have troubles many times.” The word here translated received (translated accepted in 2.13) may have the meaning of receiving willingly or welcoming; but it is also the ordinary word for receiving a letter. In this type of context, it is essentially equivalent to “believed.”

The Thessalonians to whom Paul writes have received the message. This is literally “the word,” but now in a different sense from that in verse 5, where it was a question of “mere words.” Here it is a synonym for “the Good News”; it is the Christian message, called the message about the Lord in verse 8 and God’s message in 2.13. It is clearly, in this context, a spoken rather than a written message. In translating the message, it may be important to specify what it is about, for example, “the message about Jesus Christ.”

The joy that comes from the Holy Spirit specifies more clearly the point of comparison between Jesus, the evangelists, and their hearers. It is not simply that they suffered, but that the Holy Spirit (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “God’s Spirit”) gave them the power to do so with joy. Thus their joy is the effect of what the Holy Spirit has done. This is not entirely clear in Jerusalem Bible (“the joy of the Holy Spirit”) or New English Bible (“rejoiced in the Holy Spirit”). The joy that comes from the Holy Spirit or “the joy which the Holy Spirit gives” (Barclay Translator’s New Testament cf. Bible en français courant Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch Biblia Dios Habla Hoy) is to be preferred.

It may be somewhat difficult to express clearly the relation between received the message and the phrase with the joy, since joy is not the means of receiving, but the manner in which the people of Thessalonica came to believe, and in which they endured suffering. In some languages this is best expressed as a kind of accompanying experience, for example, “you believed the message about Jesus Christ, and you were joyful,” but it is important to indicate clearly the relation between the Holy Spirit and the joy. Since the relation is one of cause, it is perhaps best to translate, as in some languages, “you believed the message, and the Holy Spirit caused you to have joy,” or “… caused you to be exceedingly happy.”

It is possible that the joy experienced by the Thessalonians is better related to their experience of suffering, rather than to their reception of the good news. Accordingly, it may be possible to say “You received the good news, and because of this you experience many kinds of hardships. Yet, in spite of these hardships, the Holy Spirit continues to make you joyful.”

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 .

Now we really live. Really is implied, but most translators feel the need to add something to clarify the way in which Paul is using the word live. During the period in which he had no news from Thessalonica, his life in some sense went on; Paul is not denying this. Nor is he thinking of “eternal life,” which remained a foretaste even after Timothy’s return. Some commentators think that Paul mean “If I had gone any longer without news of you, the anxiety would have killed me,” but this interpretation is rather farfetched. Some translators (Luther 1984 Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch Bible de Jérusalem Bible en français courant Traduction œcuménique de la Bible Bijbel in Gewone Taal) add “again” or some equivalent after live, as if Paul had died during the period of his anxiety, but had now come to life again (cf. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “It is like new life for us, to know that you stand firm”; Jerusalem Bible, more weakly, “now we can breathe again”). The most likely explanation is that for Paul, as for Hebrew thought in general, life is not simply the opposite of death, just as peace is not simply the absence of war. There are degrees of being alive. Isolation from the community, like illness, can makes a person less alive. In many languages, such an expression is not understood as mere figurative speech or interpreted as “spiritual truth,” but as reality. Conversely, the renewal of a relationship, like the restoration of health, increases life and makes it full. So it was with the renewal, though Timothy, of Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians. Knox conveys this concept well: “it brings fresh life to us”; and so does Barclay: “it makes life worth living for us.” Paul’s life is bound up with that of the Christian communities he has helped to found.

The ways in which live is qualified in this kind of context differ widely from language to language. In some instances one may simply say “now it is good to live if you stand firm,” “now it means something for us to live if…,” or “now we are happy to live if….”

If you stand firm. Paul makes here what, in classical Greek, would have been a grammatical error (which the pedantic copyists of a few manuscripts have “corrected”) in order to express his confidence that the Thessalonians are in fact standing firm. The meaning is: “… if (as I know you are doing) you stand firm,” but of course to put this in a normal translation would be to overemphasize the point. Some translations therefore replace “if” by “since” (Bible de Jérusalem Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) or “as” (Jerusalem Bible). Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “to know that you stand firm” expresses Paul’s confidence well, but loses the conditional relation. Paul’s life (in the sense suggested in the last paragraph) depends on the stability of the Thessalonians’ faith.

Stand firm seems so understandable that translators may not recognize how misleading a literal rendering might be. An expression such as this may have nothing to do with consistency of behavior. Far more frequently one must use an expression such as “continue strong,” “remain hard,” “walk the same path,” or, negatively, “do not turn aside from” or “do not depart even a little from.”

In your life is added in translation, to explain in union with the Lord (literally “in Lord”), an expression which Paul uses very often to show the Christian’s relation of dependence on and belonging to Christ—the objective counterpart of the Christian’s faith (cf. 1.1). In general, life must be modified in terms of some special quality, for example, “good,” “real,” or “meaningful.”

“In the Lord” by itself has little impact in many languages, and may indeed be almost meaningless, at least to people outside church circles. There is no general solution to the problem of translating this expression, since its meaning varies somewhat according to the context. Barclay has “if you remain unshakably true to your Lord.” Bible en français courant, in similarity with Good News Translation, has “in your union with the Lord,” reflecting the view that “in the Lord” involves a (mystical and/or moral) identification of the Christian with Christ. In some languages it is meaningless to employ a phrase such as “in the Lord,” since there is simply no way in which one can conceive of a person’s being “in Christ” or “in the Lord.” However, one can speak about being “joined closely to the Lord” or even “living together with the Lord,” thus being in union with the Lord, and in some languages the closest equivalent is “your life for the Lord.”

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 .

The words translated did not choose (cf. Phillips; Revised Standard Version New English Bible Knox Barclay [cf. Moffatt] “has not destined,” King James Version “hath not appointed,” Jerusalem Bible “never meant us to experience the Retribution”) have been understood in rather different ways, as the various English translations just quoted show. The ordinary meaning of this common verb is “to put.” One of its extended meanings is “to put in a particular position or office,” and thus “to appoint.” “To destine” is the meaning chosen here by many commentators and translators, but it is rare elsewhere. It is not the more usual word for “choose” (found, for example, in 1 Corinthians 1.27), nor is it the word for “predestine” (found in Romans 8.29-30 and Ephesians 1.5, 11). The closest parallel is Acts 13.47 (quoting Isaiah 49.6), where Good News Translation translates “I have made you a light for the Gentiles.” The Greek verb does not imply choosing certain persons from among a larger group, and the reference to the future contained in the English “destine” is found, not in the Greek verb itself, but in the following words, “for wrath.” In order to avoid as far as possible all these outside associations, there is much to be said for keeping close to the ordinary meaning of the verb, and translating “God did not put here in order to condemn us.” “Here” (that is, “in the church,” not “in the world”) is implied. “In order to condemn us” brings out the clear implication that the “wrath” is God’s (Good News Translation does this by inserting his).

If one wishes to avoid a direct translation of choose, it may be possible to employ an expression such as “God did not deal with us as he has…,” or “God has not done what he has done to us in order to condemn us.”

To possess may mean “to hold in possession” or “to gain possession of.” How one translates this verb will depend on whether salvation is understood as a present possession or a future hope. This question is settled decisively (1) by hope of salvation in verse 8, which implies a future event, and (2) by the parallel to suffer his anger, which has a future reference. The wider context, too, looks forward to the final and complete salvation which believers will experience at the coming of Christ. Salvation is therefore here a future hope, and to possess means “to gain possession of.”

To suffer his anger may be rendered in some languages as “in order to condemn us and make us suffer at the last judgment,” or “just so that he could make us suffer.” The phrase to possess salvation may seem clear in English, but it is quite impossible in some languages where “to possess” may refer only to objects and not a state such as is implied in salvation. If one translates the first part of verse 9 as “God did not deal with us as he did in order to make us suffer at the last judgment,” it may then be possible to translate the second part as “but he did what he did in order to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In placing the negative in verse 9a, it may be necessary to shift it from God’s activity to the suffering, for example, “God dealt with us as he did, not in order to make us suffer, but in order that we would be saved through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In some cases it may be necessary to introduce the positive statement before the negative one, for example, “God dealt with us as he did in order that we would be saved through our Lord Jesus Christ. He did not purpose that we would just suffer.”

Through our Lord Jesus Christ expresses secondary agency. It is God who is the primary agent in salvation, and this is made possible by means of the Lord Jesus Christ. This secondary agency is expressed in some languages by “in order that God would save us; our Lord Jesus Christ did it.”

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 .