G4137

• {"n":"Ephesians 5:18","s":"Be filled with the Spirit. The Greek is a command to keep being filled, continuously, and by someone else.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=ephesians-5-18","r":"Ephesians 5:18","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"English versions all read be filled. Some study Bibles add a note about the present tense. No version can carry it in the text."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**Shut the door.** **Keep shutting the door.** English needs a helper word for the second one. Greek does it inside the verb, so a command can carry keep on in its own form. Every English rendering of this verse has to drop that or add words."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Plerousthe is present tense, passive voice, imperative mood, second person plural. Present tense in Greek is aspect rather than time: it presents the action as ongoing. Passive means the filling is done to you. Plural means it is addressed to a congregation, not to an individual."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English imperatives have no aspect. Be filled sounds like a single event you perform once. The Greek is nearer to keep on being filled, and English has no way to say that without adding words the original did not have."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Greek tense is mostly about aspect, not time. When a command feels like a one-time transaction in English, check whether the Greek is present, which frames it as a continuing state, or aorist, which frames it as a whole."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no disagreement about the parsing. The disagreement is whether to smuggle the aspect into the English, which makes the sentence heavier, or to leave it and lose it. Every version has chosen to lose it."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u03c0\u03bb\u03b7\u03c1\u03cc\u03c9 pleroo \u00b7 G4137"}],"src":["Standard Greek grammars on verbal aspect: Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek; Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament","The contrast with the aorist imperative in the same letter"]}