This is the third in a series of posts on Bible translations, commentaries and the NLT Bible. You can read Part 1 here, and follow the link from it to Part 2. I was originally going to title these posts "How the NLT Both Helps and Falls Short" in studying the Bible. I did want to find the NLT helpful. But I can't say it is. It may be, in places, but I can't point to where, as I haven't compared it a lot to the original languages. I can only say you need to be careful in relying on it to be accurate, and that its failure to be faithful to the Greek in this one experiment of mine is troubling.
Here's the story: in researching a phrase from Romans 5:5, "hope does not put us to shame", I turned to the NLT to see if it could offer some clarification. But in reading Romans 5:5 in the NLT and then continuing to verse 6, I found problems. The most glaring, which I discussed in my previous post, was the NLT's omission of the Greek word gar ("for"). But there were other problems, too. First, for clarification, here is Romans 5:5-6 from the two translations I used in my research.
From the ESV's word-for-word translation:
"(5)... and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (6) For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."
Then the NLT's thought-for-thought translation:
"(5) And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (6) When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners."
I wanted to see if it worded that phrase in a way that made it more clear in meaning. Let me just mention here that what Paul is saying in Romans 5:5 is that this is a unique hope. It's the hope expressed in the hymn line, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness..." "Hope" in Romans 5:4-5 isn't a wish, but a solid conviction springing out of something God has done, which Paul will describe in the next verses. We won't be ashamed of having had that hope, because it's all going to happen just like God has promised.
I noticed when I first looked at Romans 5:5 in the NLT that "disappointment" was used instead of "shame". I don't know all the ins and outs of that choice, but the Greek word, kataischuno, means "to shame down", to "put to the blush", to "confound" (from Strong's concordance). It's used when one has been proven wrong. So translating that it's a hope that "does not put us to shame" seems better than that it "will not lead to disappointment". That same word is used elsewhere in Scripture (Philippians 1:20, 1 Peter 2:6) where it has the idea of standing before God to give account. And in this passage, it helps to get the meaning and understand the translation issues if the word "shame" is used instead of "disappointment".
For the sake of brevity, then, I'll just use bullets to go through verses 5 and 6 in Romans 5 and talk about the differences in these two translations. I'll try to point out how I think the thought-for-thought translation fails to make clear the meaning of the passage.
Verse 5: Paul begins his reason that we have such a hope with the words "for God's love has been poured into our hearts". Notice that Paul's emphasis is on God's action. He is saying that we have this kind of hope, a hope that will not put us to shame, because of something God has done, and he has begun to tell us about it.
The NLT changes the wording, making it instead, "For we know how dearly God loves us." Paul didn't say this; he didn't ground the reason for our hope in our knowledge of how dearly God loves us, or on anything else about us, but on something true about God and about what he has done. This is a subtle but important difference in wording.
Verse 5: Paul builds on the reason for a hope that does not put us to shame by explaining that the love God has poured into our hearts was "through the Spirit who has been given to us". Now it's even clearer that Paul is talking about something God has done. In the Bible, to be given the Holy Spirit is to be born from above. Paul's wording puts the emphasis on God's gracious act in giving the Holy Spirit to us. He is explaining that the reason our hope is the kind that does not put us to shame is that it's based on what God has done in giving us the new birth, not on anything we know or feel.
Unfortunately, the wording of the NLT again fails to make clear the reason for a hope that does not put us to shame. In saying that God has "given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love," the translators fail to make clear that Paul is talking about the new birth as the basis for our hope. In saying that the reason God gave his Spirit was "to fill our hearts with his love," it inserts something into the text, emphasizing the "us" whose hearts are thus filled. This isn't the way the Bible talks about conversion (see, for instance, Titus 3:5-7).
Verse 6: Paul has just explained that the reason we have this hope is that God has poured his love into our hearts through the giving of his Spirit, which is the new birth. Now Paul gives us the reason God gave us the new birth. In doing so, he arrives at the very heart of the gospel, the very reason God has loved us and given us his Spirit: "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." The little word "for" is critical, connecting God's love and giving of his Spirit in the new birth with the person and work of Christ, who died at the right time for the ungodly. This action of Christ on our behalf is thus clearly shown to be the basis for all the benefits of Romans 5:1-5.
The NLT leaves out "for" in verse 6. In verse 5, its wording failed to make clear that the reason our hope doesn't put us to shame is that God has given us the new birth. Now its wording fails to make clear that the reason God gave us the new birth is that Christ died for the ungodly. Without the little word "for" to connect, verse 6 isn't seen as the reason for all the wonderful benefits of Romans 5:1-5.
One last quibble about verse 6: The phrase translated "us sinners" in the NLT is more accurately translated "the ungodly". Christ died for those who were destitute of the fear of God, condemning in their stance toward him, blasphemous in their words and deeds toward him (all implications of the Greek word asebes). Asebes is always translated, as far as I can tell, "godless" or "ungodly" in literal translations. It has a different and, seems to me, much stronger implication.
Well, those are the issues that concerned me about the NLT's translation of Romans 5:5-6. I've got one more related post coming down the pike, which will just be a little summing up about translations and commentaries. Thanks for reading (you can find the final post here).
(I linked to this article in previous posts, but here it is again: a good, short article on the issues involved in choosing a translation is here.)
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