Question: Phil. 3:1; 4:4. What ground had the Revisers for putting “farewell” as the marginal equivalent for “rejoice”? A. B.
Answer: Nothing but pedantry. The verb as a secondary meaning is used for “saluting,” and so for “farewell”; but this sense is in narrow contextual bounds, as Matt. 26:49; 27:29; 28:9; Mark 15:18; Luke 1:28; John 19:3; Acts 15:23; 23:26; James 1:1, and 2 John 10, 11. Everywhere else it means “rejoice,” or “be glad,” and emphatically so in the Epistle to the Philippians where it is an evident keynote, as in 1:18, 2:17, 18, 28, 3:1, 4:4, 10. What would be the sense of “Farewell in the Lord alway”? Yet this is long after 3:1, where “farewell” would be therefore unnatural. Then we have also to take account of the kindred “joy” (χάρα) in the same Epistle, as in 1:4, 25, 2:2, 29, and 4:1 which it is impossible to mistake. But the verb ought not to be confounded as the A.V. does with καυχάομαι, “I boast” as in Rom. 5:2, 11, Phil. 3:3, James 1:9; 4:16. It may surprise one that so profound a scholar as the late Bp. Lightfoot should express the opinion on Phil. 3:1 that the word conveys both meanings here, referring also to 2:18, 4:4. Spiritual perception is another thing, and indispensable for the right rendering of scripture.