As I was translating a bit more out of 2 Corinthians chapter 2 tonight, verse 12 and 13 jumped out at me like a lion on a gazelle (too much?). Here’s the text:

When I reached Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, the Lord gave me an opportunity, but I had no peace of mind because I could not find my brother Titus. So, I left those at Troas, and departed for Macedonia.

The text literally reads “a door was opened to me by the Lord.” So here’s my question- is it ever ok to just walk away from an “open door?” Paul specifically tells us that it was an opportunity (open door, if you will) that was given to him by Jesus himself. Was it a sinful act for Paul to just walk away from it?

There’s something we have to keep in mind- just because the Bible records a historical act does not mean that God gives his stamp of approval. The passage here is simply Paul telling the Corinthians what he did during his travels that had kept him from coming to them as he first expected too. Paul is not giving an ethical judgment on his actions; he is simply stating what he did.

But that’s what makes it so weird for me… Paul is somewhat flippant about it. “Jesus gave me an opportunity to preach the Gospel, but I skipped out on it and went to hang out in Macedonia because I was sad that I couldn’t find Titus.” My opinion is that we shouldn’t miss out on divine opportunities, and that Paul was in the wrong here- but there’s two qualifying remarks I need to make here: 1. This is an opinion that I would give up if I was being persecuted for it. And by that I mean I would recant as soon as I saw them approach. 2. I’m just stuck on the flippancy of the statement.

Also, I get it. Not the point of the passage. If I was preaching this, it would be a sub-sub point. The point Paul is getting at is that he was so worried about finding Titus because it was Titus who was bringing Paul the news of how things were going at Corinth. When we couldn’t find Titus, his worry about the welfare of the Corinthians overwhelmed him. Paul was torn between Troas and Corinth. I really like what David Garland says on verse 13:

“This sad account reveals how interconnected Christians are. We cannot hurt one another without also hurting the work of God in the world. Paul does not discuss whether it was the right thing to do to abandon a place where God had made an opportunity. His uneasiness over the Corinthians, however, made it impossible for him to continue his work there.”¹

Hmm. You know what? My original question doesn’t matter anymore. The question I should have asked first is, “do I have this same heart for those I minister to?” If you want to answer the question posed in this post, go ahead. It’s an important question. But I realized it’s not the most important question. I’m off to pray and ask Paul’s ministerial heart.

I’ve finished translating 2 Corinthians 1, and it is available under the translation link above. I’m pretty happy with most of it, though I’m not so happy about verses 13-14. That being said, I want to see how you would translate it. The text is:

¹³οὐ γὰρ ἄλλα γράφομεν ὑμῖν ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ἃ ἀναγινώσκετε ἢ καὶ ἐπιγινώσκετε· ἐλπίζω δὲ ὅτι ἕως τέλους ἐπιγνώσεσθε, ¹⁴καθὼς καὶ ἐπέγνωτε ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ μέρους, ὅτι καύχημα ὑμῶν ἐσμεν καθάπερ καὶ ὑμεῖς ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ κυρίου [ἡμῶν] Ἰησοῦ.

My translation is:

For we never write anything different to you, but only what you can read and understand. However, my hope is that you will completely understand, just as you have partly understood us, that you will boast of us just as we boast of you in the day of our Lord Jesus.

I’m just not completely satisfied with it (and really, I’m never completely satisfied with translation). What say you?

I apologize to my reader who don’t know Greek- I want your insight as well. You’re absolutely free to work from several english translations and make it your own.

The work of exegesis and translation is a community effort. Post your thoughts in the comments.

Next week is finals week, so I’ve been spending my Thanksgiving “break” trudging through the Old Testament, Hebrew, the Greek of 2 Corinthians, and Systematic Theology (Note: actual amount of energy spent studying is minimal). I was reading through some select passages of 2 Corinthians, when I read:

προνοοῦμεν γὰρ καλὰ οὐ μόνον ἐνώπιον κυρίου ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐνώπιον ἀνθρώπων

Which I translated “For we attempt to do what is good, not only before the Lord, but also before people.” They want a rather literal translation on the final. As usual, I try to gauge my translation against several others, including the ESV, TNIV, NLT, etc, though this isn’t really a hard passage at all. I was a bit confused at why the ESV decided to render the two genitive phrases differently however. The ESV says in 21b: “not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of man.” I think the translation “sight” renders the ideal well (see also the TNIV’s “in the eyes of”), but see how differently the two phrases are rendered? This seems to ruin the parallelism of the verse to me. In rendering the word “before” as “in the sight of,” the ESV correctly translates the first phrase as a subjective/possessive genitive “in the Lord’s sight,” but then switches to “in the sight of man.”

Now, this isn’t an ESV hate post. The translation is correct (well, there is that issue of people/men). Just wondering why they inconsistently translated the two phrases, seemingly breaking up the parallelism. It just seems a bit soppy, or perhaps they decided to go with stylistic variation? I know, this won’t mean anything to some others, and that’s fine; it’s just that this kind of stylistic things jump out at me.

I’ve began working on my paper on 2 Corinthians 3:1-18, and thought I would give you my (wooden) translation, and breakdown of verses 1-3.

click to enlarge
You can ignore the [middle or passive] and <<ministered>>, those were idea “placeholders” as I translated through the text the first time.

This passage is a transition passage, connecting 2:17 with 3:4ff. The ὥς τινες (like some others) clause connects back to 2:17 (ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “like many others, who peddle the word of God for profit”). διακονηθεῖσα (ministered), πλαξὶν λιθίναις (stone tablets), and πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις (tablets of human hearts) all anticipate the verses that follow: Paul as a minister of the new covenant, as well as a contrast between the old and new covenants.

Certainly nothing scholarly or hard, but simply a glimpse into what’s going on at the moment.

As most commentators have pointed out, Paul seems to make an allusion in 2 Corinthians 5:12c to 1 Samuel 16:7. As I am translating this section, I bring this up only to take a look of the use of idioms.

The verse in English is:
“So that you might have an answer against those who take pride in appearances and not in what is in the heart.”

Here is the Greek:
ἵνα ἔχητε πρὸς τοὺς ἐν προσώπῳ καυχωμένους καὶ μὴ ἐν καρδίᾳ.
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As I was working on a bit more of my paper on 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, I was contemplating on what Paul is saying in verses 6-8, and verse 8 in particular. Essentially, in these verses, Paul’s degrees of preference surface: Paul would much rather live to see the parousia of Christ as opposed to the disembodied state (vv 2-3), but he would also prefer to be in the presence of Christ in a disembodied state than to be “at home in the body” (vv 6-8). This, of course, makes sense. This is not a hatred of life on Paul’s part, as we can tell from the first part of the letter which gives thanks to God for sparing his life, but a heart-felt yearning of wanting to be with Christ- whatever that may entail. This got me thinking about death and the Christian response.
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I’ve recently started writing an exegetical paper on 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, and have become intrigued with David Garland’s interpretation of verse 1 in his NAC commentary. The verse is as follows:

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

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τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει,
τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ

For the letter kills,
but the spirit causes to live.
-2 Corinthians 3:6

The verse quoted above has been the rally-call of Christians against the dangers of legalism- but is this what Paul actually means? I wrote an earlier entry reflecting on Paul’s descriptions of the old and new covenants, and why it is that he says the “ministry of death” is “glorious” (v. 7), where I stated that the Old Covenant is glorious because it brings conviction of sin. I think that verse 6, far from being an abstraction against legalism, simply states this same idea. In this post, I will try and show that meaning from this text.
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I just posted a translation of 2 Corinthians 3:7-11 in the translation section (which will be followed-up with verses 12-18 soon). In this section, Paul makes some contrasts between the Mosaic Covenant, and the New Covenant. Here is a list showing the contrasts:
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Nope, its not on 1 John, which I was working on after Philemon. That translation is on hold until after the semester is over. Instead, it is a section of scripture from 2 Corinthians, more specifically it is 2 Corinthians 1:15-24. This semester I am taking a class on Paul’s second (extant) letter to the church at Corinth, and I will be posting my translations here. Because we are only doing sections of the letter each week, it won’t be a complete translation (yet), but it will be a large bulk of the letter.

In this particular section, Paul is defending his change of plans of delaying a visit to Corinth.