1 COR 5:6 Interlinear View

SIL Open Translator’s Notes:

Section 5:1–13: Paul commanded the believers to punish the immoral church member

Someone had told Paul that one of the men in the church in Corinth had been having sexual relations with his father’s wife, that is, his step-mother. Paul wrote that the believers must punish this man by expelling him from the church. They should not allow this man to meet with them when they gathered to worship God together. Paul urged the Corinthians to keep away from people who called themselves believers but continually committed grave sins. The main point of this section is that the Corinthians were to judge and discipline the man within their fellowship who was sinning.

Paragraph 5:6–8

In this section, Paul referred to two Jewish feasts. The Passover Feast was held each year in remembrance of the time that the Israelites departed from Egypt. Its name comes from the way the angel of death “passed over” each family that had placed the blood of a lamb on their doorposts. After celebrating the Passover, the Jewish people celebrated a second feast, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It lasted for seven days. It was called this because people ate bread made without yeast.

Paul assumed that the Corinthian believers knew about these Jewish holidays. But the people who read your translation may not know about them. In your translation you may want to use a dictionary/glossary or footnotes to explain the Jewish customs of Passover and Unleavened Bread.Here are some brief explanations about Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread and yeast. You may want to put information like this into a dictionary (glossary) in the back of your translation, or in a footnote at 1 Corinthians 5:6–8, to explain background information to your readers.Passover: On the day of Passover, the Jewish people remember the day that God freed them from being slaves in Egypt long ago. We read this story in Exodus 12. On that day long ago, God punished the Egyptian people so they would allow the Jewish people to go free. Here is what he did. First he gave the Jewish people these instructions: Each family was to kill a lamb and put its blood on the sides and top of the doorway of their house. Then they were to stay inside the house all night, cook the lamb and eat it. On that same night, God killed every firstborn son in the land of Egypt. But he did not kill anyone who was in a house where there was the blood of a lamb on the door. In the NT, Jesus was killed at the time of the Passover feast (Matthew 26:2; Luke 22:1; John 13:1). Jesus is like a lamb that the Jewish people killed at Passover time, because he died in our place, so that God would not punish us for our sins. See John 1:29, 36; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:18–19; Revelation 5; Isaiah 53:6–7; Acts 8:32–35.Feast of Unleavened Bread: This is the name of a special holiday of the Jewish people. Every year they removed all yeast from their houses. They ate bread made with no yeast. They did this beginning on the day of Passover and for the seven days that followed (Exodus 12:15–20). This custom reminded them of the time when they left Egypt long ago. At that time long ago, God caused the Egyptian people to free the Jewish people from being slaves. They left Egypt quickly and did not have time to put yeast in their bread dough (Exodus 12:39).Yeast: This is a sort of fungus that is mixed with flour. When the flour is mixed with water and sugar, the yeast causes the mixture to get bigger. A very small amount of yeast will affect a large amount of flour, water and sugar. In the NT, yeast is often a symbol of evil behavior. See Matthew 16:6–12; Mark 8:15–21; Luke 12:1; 1 Corinthians 5:6–8; Galatians 5:9. But in Matthew 13:33 and Luke 13:20–21, yeast is a symbol of how God’s kingdom becomes bigger.

In these verses Paul used the Passover lamb and yeast as symbols/metaphors. First, the Passover feast was a reminder of the joy and the freedom from slavery that the Jewish people experienced after God delivered them from the power of the Egyptian king. Slavery can be compared to the bondage that sinning causes us to experience, so the metaphor of Passover refers to a new life of freedom from sin. Second, just as the Jewish people removed yeast from their houses, so the Corinthian believers should remove the immoral man from their church group (5:7a), because the immoral man was like yeast among the believers. Believers should stop behaving in evil ways (5:8).

5:6a

Your boasting is not good.

¶ You should not feel proud about your church group.
¶ Since/Because there is an immoral person in your group, you should not be talking proudly about yourselves.
¶ There is an immoral person in your group. But even so, you are proud of yourselves. This is not good/proper.

Your boasting is not good: The Corinthians thought that they had many reasons to boast. They had special abilities that God’s Spirit had given them. They were proud of these special abilities and the important roles of leadership that some of them had in their church group. Paul said that, because someone in their group was committing a serious sin, they should not be proud. Actually they had much of which they should be ashamed. Other ways to translate this include:

Your bragging is not good. (NCV)

It’s not good for you to brag. (GW)

5:6b

Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?

Remember: a little bit of yeast can make a lot of dough puff up.
Remember what it is like when people make bread. They only need to use a small amount of yeast to make all of the bread rise. Bad behavior is like that yeast!
Don’t you know that even one sinner in your group may cause others to sin?

Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?: This is a rhetorical question. The expected answer is something like “Of course we know that.” Paul asked this rhetorical question so that the Corinthian believers would think start to think truthfully about the situation in their church group. (Compare 3:16a and the note on 3:16a.) Paul wanted them to understand that it was very dangerous for them to allow the immoral man to remain as a member of their group.

There are two ways to translate this rhetorical question:

as a rhetorical question. For example:
Don’t you know that a little yeast affects the whole batch of dough? (NET)
as a statement. For example:
You know the saying, “Just a little yeast makes the whole batch rise.” (NCV)

You may translate this in whichever of these ways is the more natural in your language.

a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough: This was probably a well-known saying. In English we have a similar saying: “One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel.” James also used a figure of speech with a similar meaning: “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark” (James 3:5). The meaning of all these metaphors is that something small can have a big influence. Paul used this saying about leaven/yeast to teach that one immoral man in the church causes other people in the church to sin or to suffer. The batch/lump of dough represents the church, God’s group of people. The little bit of leaven represents one person’s wrongdoing and its bad effect on the others.

There are several ways to translate this metaphor:

Literally. Do this only if people in your language group understand about leaven and will understand the meaning of the metaphor. For example:
Don’t you know that a little yeast spreads through the whole batch of dough? (GW)
Keep the metaphor but make the meaning of the metaphor explicit. For example:
Just like a little leaven can make a lot of dough rise, so one immoral man in your group can cause many others to suffer or even fall into sin.
Remove the metaphor. For example:
Don’t you realize that if even one person is allowed to go on sinning, soon all will be affected? (NLT96)

leaven: The Greek word that the BSB translates as leaven refers to a substance that people mix into flour when they are making bread. It is a fungus that causes the bread dough to ferment and rise. In some English versions it is called “yeast.” There are several verses in the Bible where yeast or leaven is a symbol of evil behavior (Matthew 16:6–12; Mark 8:15–21; Luke 12:1; Galatians 5:9). Here Paul used leaven as a metaphor to teach the Corinthian believers that one evil person can influence many people in a group.

uW Translation Notes:

οὐ καλὸν τὸ καύχημα ὑμῶν

(Some words not found in SR-GNT: Οὒ καλόν τό καύχημα ὑμῶν Οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι μικρά ζύμη ὅλον τό φύραμα ζυμοῖ)

Alternate translation: [Your boasting is bad]

Note 1 topic: figures-of-speech / explicit

μικρὰ ζύμη, ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ

(Some words not found in SR-GNT: Οὒ καλόν τό καύχημα ὑμῶν Οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι μικρά ζύμη ὅλον τό φύραμα ζυμοῖ)

In [5:6–8](../05/06.md), Paul speaks about yeast and “dough.” Verses 7–8 clarify that Paul is thinking about the “Passover.” In this Jewish festival, people would remove all the yeast from their houses and only bake dough that was not fermented (“unleavened bread”). See [Exodus 12:1–28](../exo/12/01.md). In this verse, then, the yeast does not represent a good thing. Rather, it is supposed to be removed from the house, but any yeast that is left will still “leaven” a whole loaf. If your language would not consider yeast to be a bad thing when mixed into dough, you could include a word or phrase that indicates that the yeast is not wanted in the dough. Alternate translation: [a little yeast leavens a whole loaf that is meant to be unleavened]

Note 2 topic: figures-of-speech / rquestion

οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι μικρὰ ζύμη, ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ?

(Some words not found in SR-GNT: Οὒ καλόν τό καύχημα ὑμῶν Οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι μικρά ζύμη ὅλον τό φύραμα ζυμοῖ)

Paul does not ask this question because he is looking for information or for agreement or disagreement. Rather, he asks it to involve the Corinthians in what he is arguing by reminding them of something that they should already know. The question assumes that the answer is “yes.” If it would be helpful in your language, you could express the idea behind this question with an emphatic statement. Alternate translation: [You know that a little yeast leavens the whole loaf]

Note 3 topic: figures-of-speech / exmetaphor

μικρὰ ζύμη, ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ

(Some words not found in SR-GNT: Οὒ καλόν τό καύχημα ὑμῶν Οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι μικρά ζύμη ὅλον τό φύραμα ζυμοῖ)

Here, yeast refers to anything that is added to bread dough to make it ferment and rise. This could be yeast itself or dough that is already fermented (“leaven”). Paul here uses this metaphor to indicate that, just like even a little bit of yeast will “leaven” the whole loaf, so a little bit of sin, or one person who sins, will affect the whole church. Therefore, the Corinthians believers should not “boast,” since the one person who is sinning among them denigrates the whole church. Since this metaphor is based on material from the Old Testament, you should try to preserve the form in your language. You could use a simile, or if necessary, you could use a comparable metaphor. Alternate translation: [sin is like yeast: a little yeast leavens the whole loaf] or [one bad apple spoils the whole barrel]

OET-LV English word order (‘Reverse’ interlinear)

Note: The OET-RV is still only a first draft, and so far only a few words have been (mostly automatically) matched to the Hebrew or Greek words that they’re translated from.

Acknowledgements: The SR Greek text, lemmas, morphology, and VLT gloss are all thanks to the CNTR.

OET interlinear 1 COR 5:6

SR Greek word order

Section 5:1–13: Paul commanded the believers to punish the immoral church member

Paragraph 5:6–8

5:6a

5:6b

OET-LV English word order (‘Reverse’ interlinear)

OET interlinear 1 COR 5:6

SR Greek word order

Section 5:1–13: Paul commanded the believers to punish the immoral church member

Paragraph 5:6–8

5:6a

5:6b

OET-LV English word order (‘Reverse’ interlinear)

OET interlinear 1 COR 5:6