Rev 18:20

Jason Lee jllee at mailcity.com
Sat Jun 19 06:38:01 EDT 1999


Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:

>The question is about the translation of the "because clause":
>hOTI EKRINEN hO QEOS TO KRIMA hUMWN EX AUTHS. 
>Literally it says:
>God judged your judgement from her. 

>Some translated it as
>God judged your judgement against her.
>It seems to make sense. 
>So, here we have two questions. 
>(1) Can EX mean AGAINST?
>(2) What does "KRINW TO KRIMA hUMWN"?

If one explains the syntax of hUMWN, two different translations can be 
understood.
EKRINEN TO KRIMA hUMWN is not a plain cognate accusative, but more of  a 
word-play (if you will) that switches the subject from ‘you' to ‘He,' in a 
vicarious sense. However, ‘God judged your (subjective genitive) judgement 
EX AUTHS' most likely does not make EX AUTHS mean ‘against her' as an 
oblique to EKRINEN, for EX AUTHS has to be treated as a phrase of source or 
cause. I do not think EX means ‘against' literally. EP' AUTHi (already used 
in this verse earlier), KAT' AUTHS, or simply AUTHN would work better with 
EKRINEN in that situation. Thus, to take hUMWN as a subjective genitive, 
the translation would be ‘God judged your judgement due to her' or 
paraphrasing it as ‘God has pronounced judgement for you against/on her.' 
The sense of ‘against' does not come out of EX, but is implicit in KRIMA or 
EKRINEN.  This is one way to translate.

The second way to translate, which I prefer, is to take hUMWN as the object 
and EX AUTHS as the agent (or subject, loosely speaking) of KRIMA. The 
translation will then be ‘God judged the judgement from her to you (on 
her).' To paraphrase this a la Holtzmann (quoted by Arndt and Gingrich, 
1979): ‘God has pronounced on her the judgement she wished to impose on 
you.' Or, rephrased more simply as in NIV: ‘God has judged her for the way 
she treated you.'

In both translations, KRIMA EP' AUTHi is implied, and the meanings are not 
too far apart. The latter, in my opinion, however, handles EX AUTHS 
better.

Jason



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