Continuing from my post Jesus is unbelievable, I want to look at how different translations have handled Paul’s citation of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17.
Here are several translations in English plus two in Portuguese and one in Chichewa. What I want you to notice is whether or not the quote by Paul reflects the wording of the Old Testament source. I’ve highlighted the focus of our study here.
| Habakkuk 2:4 | Romans 1:17 | |
| 1 |
“See, he is puffed up; |
For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” |
| 2. |
Look at the proud! |
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” |
| 3. | Behold his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. | For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. |
| 4. | “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked; but the righteous will live by their faith. | This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” |
| 5. |
“Escreva: O ímpio está envaidecido; |
Porque no evangelho é revelada a justiça de Deus, uma justiça que do princípio ao fim é pela fée , como está escrito: “O justo viverá pela fé. |
| 6. |
A mensagem é esta: |
Pois o evangelho mostra como é que Deus nos aceita: é por meio da fé, do começo ao fim. Como dizem as Escrituras Sagradas: “Viverá aquele que, por meio da fé, é aceito por Deus.” |
| 7. |
Ochita zoipa adzalephera koma ochita chifuniro cha Chauta adzakhala ndi moyo chifukwa cha kukhulupirika kwake. |
Uthengawutu umatiwululira m’mene anthu amapezekera kuti ngolungama pamaso pa Mulungu . Njira yake kuyambira pa chiyambi mpaka potsiriza ndi yakuti anthu akhulupirire. Paja Malembo akuti, “Munthu wolungama pakukhulupirira adzakhala ndi moyo.” |
Here are the versions together with footnotes if they had them:
- NIV
- NRSV alt, “The one who is righteous through faith will live”
- KJV
- NLT
- NVI (NIV Portuguese) note, “Várias versões dizem sua fé, com possível base na Septuaginta.”
- NTLH (New Translation in Language of Today, Porutuguese)
- BL (Buku Loyera, a modern translation in Chichewa, a language spoken by more than 17 million people in Southern Central Africa.
There’s so much that could be said here about Paul’s appropriation of Habakkuk’s phrase. The interpretation of Habakkuk 2:4b is by no means simple. John Hobbins offers five possible interpretations of this phrase in his post, Habakkuk 2:4.
Let me begin with a disclaimer. I write this as an amateur. But I also write about it with the confidence that my fellow bloggers will be help me out in those areas where I’m weak. I encourage you to comment on the Septuagint (my version on my computer got wiped out recently) and also on historical theology and the New Perspective on Paul.
My understanding of Paul’s use of Habakkuk 2:4b here is that he is setting up an accepted argument and then smashing it in the following passage. The Old Testament conception of a “just person” was someone who was pleasing to God because of the fidelity of their lives to the covenant of God. The book of Proverbs in particular is full of dichotomies between the just and the wicked. Later books of the Old Testament tweak this simple binary distinction, Job for example. But in general an explicit restatement of Habakkuk 2:4b might be something like the following:
Righteous people will be spared because of their fidelity to God’s covenant.
Paul uses that mental framework as a springboard for his own argument, namely that no one is righteous, absolutely no one. He could have spelled it out explicitly at this point and said something like, “The truth is those justified by Christ’s atonement will live because of his fidelity.” But he didn’t. Instead he launches into an extended description of the depravity of humanity. Humanity in general. The Gentiles in particular. And finally, even the Jews. Paul is trying to get his readers to reinterpret the Old Testament idea in terms of the New Covenant. When Paul reads Habakkuk 2:4b, in Christological terms he is hearing something like this:
Those justified by Christ will be spared from judgment because of Christ’s faithfulness.
Just because I hold this interpretation doesn’t mean that I think Romans 1:17 should be over-explained to make this explicit. On the contrary, I think the ambiguity of the phrase “The just shall live by faith” is entirely appropriate. I would make a slight change however. The Portuguese NIV consciously doesn’t harmonize these two verses. In Habakkuk, it says “The righteous will live by his fidelity.” While in Romans it says, “The righteous will by faith.” But I would suggest that “fidelity” would be a better rendering for PISTIS in Romans 1 for the reason that “by faith” excludes the possibility of reading this verse as anything other than “our belief” when Paul was specifically drawing attention to the concept of fidelity which he intends to show in the following verses belongs not to us but to Christ.
So, in conclusion I think we can’t unlock the secret of the book of Romans until we lose “our faith” and replace it with “faithfulness.” I believe such a rendering in Romans 1:7 would help make better sense of how this key verse sets the stage for the switcheroo that Paul is making by playing on the ambiguity of his Old Testament citation.
ἐὰν ὑποστείληται, οὐκ εὐδοκεῖ ἡ ψυχή μου ἐν αὐτῷ·
ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεώς μου ζήσεται.
– Jews translating from Hebrew to Greek in Alexander the Great’s city in Egypt
δικαιοσύνη γὰρ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν,
καθὼς γέγραπται,
Ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται.
– Paul writing in Greek (translating from Hebrew some) to Jews in Rome
Why isn’t Paul writing in Latin? He’s a Roman citizen and he speaks Latin. Fine, the audience probably reads and speaks Greek.
Why doesn’t he use the Hebrew text more directly? Why not render more directly into Greek the original quoted line וְצַדִּיק בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ יִחְיֶה? Fine, the audience probably reads and speaks Greek better and has enough familiarity with Hebrew from the synagogue readings and teachings.
Or is Paul translating to show the wiggle room that the LXX translators showed in בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ? Does Paul know his Hebrew? Of course he does. He’s a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
So Paul knows what choice the LXX translators were making by doing what John Hobbins describes as one possibility (as if there must be “the” correct one) : translating ἐκ πίστεώς μου “depends on reading the suffix of emunah in Hebrew as ‘my’ rather than ‘his.’ The letters in question, waw and yodh, were easily confused by copyists.” So is Paul correcting a copyist’s confusion? Is he redacting the LXX translation to correct it?
Or might Paul be making the Greek as ambiguous as the Hebrew? ἐκ [??] πίστεως!
Wouldn’t it be terrible (and now I’m being intentionally sarcastic) if the Bible had many dimensions? If sometime unintentionally the text allowed — as Jesus demanded — the listener to listen with subjective, interpretive intention. If there was enough wiggle room and playfulness in the text so that it becomes the parable of change for the reader, the spark of belief in the reader for what Jesus’ and John’s tranlators called ‘meta-noia’ – a re-thinking of everything? Jesus would teach saying, “You have heard that the text says . . . but I say to you . . .” Then he’d give this extreme hyperbolic outlandish interpretation that made listeners squirm in their seats, re-thinking everything.
So back to Paul and the Hebrew and the Greek. It’s fascinating that the sentence before reads, “Porque não me envergonho do evangelho, pois é o poder de Deus para salvação de todo aquele que crê; primeiro do judeu, e também do grego.” παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι, Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ελληνι. He’s suggesting that the gospel message is God’s dynamic for everyone believing. Jews first, Greeks next, then Romans, Portuguese, Brazilians, Brits, Americans, Cherokees, Mozambicans. . . . It’s as though Paul is saying that God is saying (allowing in Greek) “πίστεώς μου” is “πίστεώς [σου]” – My believing is like your own believing. And the important thing is the subjective interpretive personal metanoia thing, πίστεώς.
Very well done. I think it’s true that Paul’s point of departure, against which he pushes, was an interpretation of the kind you suggest:
Righteous people will be spared because of their fidelity to God’s covenant.
But I don’t think Paul replaces the fidelity of the righteous with the fidelity of Christ in his argument that takes off in Romans 1 and continues for several chapters. He replaces works-righteousness with noetic faith, a life-embracing existential stance that informs all of life but cannot and should not be reduced or identified with one of its consequences, (our) faithfulness. It pains me, of course, to defend such a traditional take on Paul. So fuddy-duddy. But the attempt of New Perspective people not to leave one stone upon another is, I’m convinced, fundamentally misguided. The emphasis on solus Christus is not wrong so much as incomplete. That bugger Paul was Christocentric but that did not stop him from spending most of his time doing (theo-)anthropology. I agree with Kurk’s final sentence, which I would tweak as follows:
the important thing is the subjective interpretive interpersonal metanoia thing, πίστεώς.
Once again, metanoia is an existential stance, a turning in God’s direction at the foot of the cross, a life led coram Deo, in God’s presence, specifically, in the presence of the crucified and risen Lord.
I think Paul is understanding Hab 2.4 in a slightly different way, a way not listed among Hobbins’ 5 ways, but one that can rightly be derived either from the Hebrew (with its “his” faith) or the LXX (with its “my=God’s faith[fulness]). So, I am not arguing here what Hab 2.4 ‘really’ says, but trying to understand what Paul thinks it means. Of the translations, only the alternative in the NRSV gets it correct: “The one who is righteous through faith will live.” Note that the idea here is: “{The one who is righteous through faith} will live.” Ie, this is Paul’s way into righteousness apart from works of the law, and so I am reading 1.17 as completely consistent with the claim he makes again in 3.28-30.
>John, I absolutely love your “interpersonal” point! which you prove by your comment in conversation with us.
>mgvh, Paul repeats the idea of Romans 3.28-30 when writing to the Jews in Galatia (3:11) : “ὅτι δὲ ἐν νόμῳ οὐδεὶς δικαιοῦται παρὰ τῷ θεῷ δῆλον, ὅτι Ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται” which NRSV (w/ fn*) renders, “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for *’The one who is righteous through faith will live’.”
The writer of the letter to Hebrews (10:38) translates Hab 2:4 (keeping the “μου” of the LXX but putting it in front of and not within the prepositional phrase) as follows:
ὁ δὲ δίκαιός μου ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται
NRSV and NIV (and NLT*) all make that “but my righteous one(s*) will live by faith.” But KJV and the Portuguese translators are more Greeky with ὁ δίκαιός as “the just” and “O justo” or “o meu justo.” The context of the letter to Hebrews here clearly emphasizes the role of belief or faith in a worked-out perseverance under the shadow of the law. The writer seems to take John’s fifth possible interpretation: “The upright one will live (in the midst of the current crisis) on the basis of his [or her] dutifulness.”
You guys are inspiring me (and noetic is sending me running for my dictionary!).
JK, I’m all for multivalence in our translations and that’s why I object to translating PISTIS here as “faith” because it actually excludes Paul’s possible wordplay. And actually the same problem exists with “just.” If we say “the righteous one” we align this with the OT passage whereas saying something like, “the justified one” might be more correct in terms of where Paul is headed but it steals his punch line.
John: “He replaces works-righteousness with noetic faith, a life-embracing existential stance that informs all of life but cannot and should not be reduced or identified with one of its consequences, (our) faithfulness.”
I can chew on that all weekend! The judicial leitmotif here seems however to limit Paul’s argument to a specific approach to Christ’s advocacy on our behalf. I’m so out of my depth here that I think I’ll go swim in the shallow end for a while until I catch my breath.
My understanding of Habakkuk (the whole book) is essentially this:
A. All are unrighteous (God’s people were an utter mess and the nations were worse).
B. The truly righteous–made alive by faithfulness. (an ambiguous chiasmus)
A’. People are awful.
Conclusion (which makes explicit the ambiguity):
A. God is Faithful–His history has shown that (Hab. 3 and following)
B. I will respond by being patient and faithful, too. (”I will wait…”)
A’ For God is my strength.
In other words, the gospel is all about a righteousness which is through-and-through, permeated with faith/faithfulness. (ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν).
Paul takes the ambiguity which exists in the core of the Habakkuk chiasmus, in its original context, and presents it in its new covenant, Christological glory in Rom. 1:18-3:31. Not only does this clarify Rom 1:17 in its ambiguity, but it clears up the question regarding the genitives in Rom. 3. They should be translated as “Christ’s faithfulness.” For example, Rom 3:22 should read, “This righteousness is obtained through the faithfulness of the Messiah Jesus and is to all who respond with faith.” Rom. 3:22 is pretty much the identical point Habakkuk was making.
That’s my humble understanding of such a beautiful text.
Hi Mike,
I like your overall take on the book of Habakkuk, even if you assimilate its message too much to Pauline emphases for my taste.
But I don’t see how your take on the Kkuk resolves issues of interpretation in Romans. You seem to assume that Kkuk and Paul must be saying the same thing (I think they are, at a higher level of abstraction, perhaps, than you do, but I also think it could have been otherwise) such that, if the Kkuk meant x, Paul also must have meant x. Not necessarily.
As for Rom 3:22, I happen to think you are the wrong track in terms of the specific emphases and content of that passage. It seems that you and David are NLT1 people – in fact, you make the believer’s [oops] response to God’s initiative in Christ less prominent than NLT1 does – rather than NLT2 people:
NLT1: We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter what we are or what we have done.
NLT2: We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.
For the rest, I can’t believe how wordy *translators* feel they must be to get Paul’s message across. I don’t buy “the faithfulness of Christ” bit, and I prefer KISS translations (Keep It Short and Sweet, per the source text). So a translation like the following of Rom 3:21-22 is suitable in my eyes:
But now, apart from law, though with the law and the prophets bearing witness to it, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe – all, without distinction.
The diction I have chosen is pretty traditional. I think, along with the translation teams of ESV, NRSV, REB, NAB, and (T)NIV – that traditional diction is, all other things being equal, worth retaining in Bible translation. The diction found in NLT1, NLT2, and the Message is paraphrastic and worth proposing in exposition.
Note that the translation I offer of 3:22 contains 16 words – against the Greek’s 15. NLT2 has 26; NLT1: 38! I think it is fair to say that NLT1 is a paraphrase, not a translation. NLT2 moves away from paraphrase, but not completely.
Of course, a paraphrase is a kind of translation. But still.
“On the wrong track,” of course. Sorry if my language comes across as too in-your-face. I probably need to repeat to myself three times before writing: “even if this is supposed to be banter, you are not suppose to roughhouse like you do in real life. People take it personally.”
Sometimes I think an unspoken reason why people go for “faithfulness of Jesus Christ” in 3:22 and elsewhere is that it translates a genitive with a genitive. As such, it seems more accurate, whereas “faith in Jesus Christ” seems like some kind of suspect magic trick.
But it’s not. It might be wrong, but it’s not a magic trick. “Through trust of Jesus Christ” preserves the syntax, and comes close to capturing the age-old understanding of Paul’s meaning.
David,
You talk about catching your breath in the shallow end of the pool. But I think how you’re splashing around in this post is pretty profound! And your pool rules for your guests (”no water-polo roughhousing here!”) keep us calling “Polo” to your “Marco.”
When I’m “it” in the game, I want to suggest that Paul may be pushing readers (as you suggest) towards letting Jesus be the faithful one with the fidelity but however nonetheless that there’s more. There’s more, that is, than just what Paul intends (if you ever get us convinced that Paul is doing the “switcheroo” on Hab 2:4). I’m not talking about the postmodernist’s “reader’s rights,” where anything goes interpretively. I am talking about the N-dimensionality of language. Jesus would play this game with, “What do you think, what do you want, how do you read it?” So here’s the profundity. There are huge theo-logical implications of the interpretations, no?
If it’s the faithfulness and fidelity of Jesus to interpret διὰ πίστεως followed by genitive in Rom 3:22, 2 Cor 5:7, Gal 2:16, Eph 2:8, Php 3:9, 2Ti 3:15, Heb 6:12, Heb 11:33, 1Pe 1:5, then now what’s the game? Will Paul have a different rhetoric from Jesus in making his readers see this? Will he require a seminary course? A linguistics degree? A plain simple read of his Greek?
The irony is that we readers have to go along. But we may see more than Paul initially intended. What, then, does he have to do? Should he just tell us again what he meant? Should he force us to get it by making us write “faithfulness of Jesus” on the blackboard over and over a hundred times before recess? Should he dialogue with us during office hours, letting us safely save face by asking him the questions we should have asked in kindergarten (and, oh, wouldn’t that be nice?!)? But what if he did not of that? What if my “getting it” requires change, personal profound change, that will rock my little world if I believe it? (Did I just say “believe”? Hmmm. Maybe – despite all that Paul must mean – maybe “believability of Jesus” is what’s happening here also, which gets to John’s earlier-mentioned “interpersonal stuff” as I cough and gasp for breath).
“Marco…”
[...] We must lose our faith [...]
This is beautiful, Mike. Thanks for showing me the chiasmus.
“Paul takes the ambiguity which exists in the core of the Habakkuk chiasmus, in its original context, and presents it in its new covenant, Christological glory in Rom. 1:18-3:31.”
That was my hypothesis for 1:17 and you’ve extended it. Awesome!
Yeah, that “in faith” in 3:22 is rather the crux of the matter, isn’t it?
John, just a note about commenting. Please try to refer to the ideas themselves rather than the person. Instead of “I happen to think you are the wrong track …” Maybe, “I think that … mak[ing] the believer’s [oops] response to God’s initiative in Christ less prominent… is on the wrong track because X, Y, and Z.
Thanks for pointing out the difference between NLT1 and NLTse. Quite a bit of back-pedaling going on there, eh?
I started to write “assuming Paul is being ambiguous in 3:22″ but I’m having a tough time accepting that now that I look at the various occurrences of διὰ πίστεως followed by genitive.
Rom 3:22, 2 Cor 5:7, Gal 2:16, Eph 2:8, Php 3:9, 2Ti 3:15, Heb 6:12, Heb 11:33, 1Pe 1:5
Every instance seems logically to support the claim that “faithfulness of” is a better translation than “faith in.”