[B-Greek] Third-person commands
Dr. Don Wilkins
drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Wed Nov 9 14:43:24 EST 2005
Hi everybody,
I would appreciate input on an issue that's bugged me for some time,
the possibility of a third-person command's being substituted for
second-person permissive command. It's complicated, so I apologize in
advance for taking considerable space to explain it. As a translator,
I have to deal with the issue of what to do with "let" used in a
third-person command. The problem is an old one: "let" is usually
read as permission, which clashes with the idea of an imperative. We
run into the same problem with Hebrew (the use of the jussive), which
I'll use as a point of comparison. We're all familiar with "let"
commands by deity (e.g. "Let there be light"), where "let" obviously
can't be permission because God doesn't need permission to create.
But where things get really thorny is in a passage like 1 Cor. 7:15:
"...if the unbeliever leaves, let him leave...." I have always taken
this to be a command to the unbeliever following the third-person
grammar, and I still do, but I'll bet that 95% or more of the Greek-
challenged English Bible readers see it as a command to the
congregation to permit the fellow to leave. Maybe even some listers
see it that way as well. To the latter I would suggest Matt. 27:42 as
a grammatical parallel: "...let Him now come down from the cross, and
we will believe in HIm." Clearly this command is not addressed to the
crowd, asking their permission for Jesus to leave the cross, but is a
derisive command or dare addressed to Jesus himself.
Now then, lately it occurred to me that there might be some grounds
for the idea that a third-person imperative could be addressed to a
superior from an inferior in the sense of a request. A good example
would be the idea of a command addressed to God as a request. To
illustrate this, consider a passage like Ps. 31:17: "...let the
wicked be put to shame, let them be silent." Again, the "let" is
problematic, but permission is not an option as an interpretation,
and in fact the grammar is actually two commands (jussives) addressed
to the wicked. I thought the LXX would have third-person imperatives
here, but instead it has optatives, which makes sense and shows that
the translators were aware of the grammatical issue. I don't know off-
hand whether the LXX always handles the issue the same way, but I
know that the translators paid attention to the context of these
third-person commands, because in Gen. 1:3 they use the Greek
imperative for "Let there be light." In this case it would be wrong
to have the optative, "May there be light," because God is
commanding, not wishing for it.
A passage like Ps. 31:17 finds its NT counterpart in such passages as
Matt. 26:39: "My Father...let this cup pass from Me" where Jesus (or
Matthew in translation) uses the third-person imperative. Putting
aside questions about what language Jesus was speaking etc., the
grammar is a command to the cup, but it seems more likely that the
real intent of the command is a request to the Father, where the LXX
mode might be optative ("may this cup pass"). So what we seem to have
here is a situation where the command does and does not express
permission. It seemingly does in the sense of the speaker's intent,
but grammatically it does not, with "let" serving only as a poor
English substitute for the third-person imperative. That is, the
average reader might be right in thinking that Jesus was asking the
Father to permit the cup to pass, but he would be right for the wrong
reason.
That brings me back to 1 Cor. 7:15. Grammatically, "let him leave" is
a command to the unbeliever, with no ambiguity. But is it possible
that Paul's intent is to order the congregation not to stand in the
unbeliever's way, and the third-person command is a polite way to
express this, i.e. a third-person being substituted for a second-
person command?
Now I anticipate that someone will be tempted to quote Dan Wallace to
me (GGBTB on or near p. 485), something like "The imperative
shouldn't be called the command mode because it does other things as
well." But IMO Dan is either trying to simplify the situation for
most Greek students, or he might be making the mistake of allowing
interpretation to assume too great a role in defining grammar. In the
case of 1 Cor. 7:15 it is a question of intent and style vis-a-vis
grammar, not of the meaning of the imperative. So what I am
requesting here is it that we go beyond his BTB, as fine a work as
that truly is.
Don Wilkins
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