4:7 You are altogether beautiful, my darling!
There is no blemish in you!
10:2 Their heart is slipping;
soon they will be punished for their guilt.
The Lord 5 will break their altars;
he will completely destroy their fertility pillars.
1:24 Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling, 11 and to cause you to stand, rejoicing, 12 without blemish 13 before his glorious presence, 14
1 tn Aram “looking to find.”
2 tn Aram “from the side of the kingdom.”
3 tn Aram “pretext and corruption.”
4 tn Aram “no negligence or corruption was found in him.” The Greek version of Theodotion lacks the phrase “and no negligence or corruption was found in him.”
5 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the
6 tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
7 tn Grk “find no cause.”
8 tn The use of the pronoun αὐτός (autos) is intensive and focuses attention on Christ as the one who has made the church glorious.
9 tn Grk “but in order that it may be holy and blameless.”
10 tc Some of the better representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts have a passive verb here instead of the active ἀποκατήλλαξεν (apokathllaxen, “he has reconciled”): ἀποκατηλλάγητε (apokathllaghte) in (Ì46) B, ἀποκατήλλακται [sic] (apokathllaktai) in 33, and ἀποκαταλλαγέντες (apokatallagente") in D* F G. Yet the active verb is strongly supported by א A C D2 Ψ 048 075 [0278] 1739 1881 Ï lat sy. Internally, the passive creates an anacoluthon in that it looks back to the accusative ὑμᾶς (Juma", “you”) of v. 21 and leaves the following παραστῆσαι (parasthsai) dangling (“you were reconciled…to present you”). The passive reading is certainly the harder reading. As such, it may well explain the rise of the other readings. At the same time, it is possible that the passive was produced by scribes who wanted some symmetry between the ποτε (pote, “at one time”) of v. 21 and the νυνὶ δέ (nuni de, “but now”) of v. 22: Since a passive periphrastic participle is used in v. 21, there may have a temptation to produce a corresponding passive form in v. 22, handling the ὑμᾶς of v. 21 by way of constructio ad sensum. Since παραστῆσαι occurs ten words later, it may not have been considered in this scribal modification. Further, the Western reading (ἀποκαταλλαγέντες) hardly seems to have arisen from ἀποκατηλλάγητε (contra TCGNT 555). As difficult as this decision is, the preferred reading is the active form because it is superior externally and seems to explain the rise of all forms of the passive readings.
11 tn The construction in Greek is a double accusative object-complement. “You” is the object and “free from falling” is the adjectival complement.
12 tn Grk “with rejoicing.” The prepositional clause is placed after “his glorious presence” in Greek, but most likely goes with “cause you to stand.”
13 tn The construction in Greek is a double accusative object-complement. “You” is the object and “without blemish” is the adjectival complement.
14 tn Or “in the presence of his glory,” “before his glory.”