1 Thessalonians 5:10

5:10 He died ¹  for us so that whether we are alert or asleep ²  we will come to life together with him.

1 Thessalonians 4:17

4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, ³  will be suddenly caught up ⁴  together ⁵  with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

[5:10]  ¹ tn Grk “the one who died,” describing Jesus Christ (1 Thess 5:9). Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started at the beginning of v. 10 in the translation.

[5:10]  ² sn The phrases alert or asleep may be understood (1) of moral alertness (living in faith, love, and hope as vv. 6, 8 call for, versus being unresponsive to God) or (2) of physical life and death (whether alive or dead). The first fits better with the context of 5:1-9, while the second returns to the point Paul started with in 4:13-18 (no disadvantage for the believing dead).

[4:17]  ³ tc The words οἱ περιλειπόμενοι (Joi perileipomenoi, “[the ones] who are left”) are lacking in F G {0226^vid} ar b as well as a few fathers, but the rest of the textual tradition has the words. Most likely, the Western mss omitted the words because of perceived redundancy with οἱ ζῶντες (Joi zwnte", “[the ones] who are alive”).

[4:17]  ⁴ tn Or “snatched up.” The Greek verb ἁρπάζω implies that the action is quick or forceful, so the translation supplied the adverb “suddenly” to make this implicit notion clear.

[4:17]  ⁵ tn Or “simultaneously,” but this meaning does not fit as well in the parallel in 5:10.