Philippians 4:5-6: “It’s Just a (Semi-)Colon”

Matt at seventy times seven muses on how a single punctuation mark affects interpretation of Philippians 4:5-6:

if you read the Word, you’ll see that paul’s sentence begins in verse 5 and carries into verse 6, unlike the way we memorise and read it. the end of verse 5 says “the Lord is at hand;” and verse 6 begins: “do not be anxious about anything…” our bibles divide that sentence into two parts, but it’s a semicolon, not a period at the end of verse 5. it doesn’t make sense to memorise half of his thought, he made it a thought on purpose. it’s like quoting john 3:16: “for God so loved the world.” well, fantastic, but what did He do about it? similarly, without the first half of that sentence: “the Lord is at hand,” we’re left wondering why we should be anxious for nothing. His continual presence assures and enables us to rely on Him.

because of the verse divisions in the bibles we read, and the verse-by-verse format in the kjv, it’s easy to miss things like that. my esv is in paragraph form, so the only thing interrupting the thought was a superscript 6 for the verse. it read right thru, and it stood out to me. i thought, “hey, that’s a sentence, and i only know half of it.” even the leader, when he read it, stopped at the ‘end’ of verse 5 for the verse division, like the singing congregation that breathes in the middle of a word or sentence just because. paul wrote a letter, not a string of little verses.

The ESV alone among recent translations separates Philippians 4:5 and 6 with a semicolon; other translations make “The Lord is at hand” into a separate sentence.

Here’s Philippians 4:5b-6 in the ESV:

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 10:00 am and is filed under Translation. Both comments and pings are currently closed.