2 Corinthians 2:7

2:7 so that now instead ¹  you should rather forgive and comfort him. ²  This will keep him from being overwhelmed by excessive grief to the point of despair. ³ 

2 Corinthians 5:17

5:17 So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away ⁴  – look, what is new ⁵  has come! ⁶ 

[2:7]  ¹ tn Grk “so that on the other hand.”

[2:7]  ² tn The word “him” is not in the Greek text but is supplied. Direct objects in Greek were often omitted and must be supplied from the context.

[2:7]  ³ tn Grk “comfort him, lest somehow such a person be swallowed up by excessive grief,” an idiom for a person being so overcome with grief as to despair or give up completely (L&N 25.285). In this context of excessive grief or regret for past sins, “overwhelmed” is a good translation since contemporary English idiom speaks of someone “overwhelmed by grief.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence and the difficulty of expressing a negative purpose/result clause in English, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[5:17]  ⁴ tn Grk “old things have passed away.”

[5:17]  ⁵ tc Most mss have the words τὰ πάντα (ta panta, “all things”; cf. KJV “behold, all things are become new”), some after καίνα (kaina, “new”; D² K L P Ψ 104 326 945 2464 pm) and others before it (6 33 81 614 630 1241 1505 1881 pm). The reading without τὰ πάντα, however, has excellent support from both the Western and Alexandrian texttypes (Ì⁴⁶ א B C D* F G 048 0243 365 629 1175 1739 pc co), and the different word order of the phrase which includes it (“all things new” or “new all things”) in the ms tradition indicates its secondary character. This secondary addition may have taken place because of assimilation to τὰ δὲ πάντα (ta de panta, “and all [these] things”) that begins the following verse.

[5:17]  ⁶ tn Grk “new things have come [about].”