2 Timotius 2:8-11

2:8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David; ¹  such is my gospel, ²  2:9 for which I suffer hardship to the point of imprisonment ³  as a criminal, but God’s message ⁴  is not imprisoned! ⁵  2:10 So I endure all things for the sake of those chosen by God, ⁶  that they too may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus and its eternal glory. ⁷  2:11 This saying ⁸  is trustworthy: ⁹ 

If we died with him, we will also live with him.

[2:8]  ¹ tn Grk “of David’s seed” (an idiom for physical descent).

[2:8]  ² tn Grk “according to my gospel.”

[2:9]  ³ tn Or “chains,” “bonds.”

[2:9]  ⁴ tn Or “word.”

[2:9]  ⁵ tn Or “chained,” “bound.”

[2:10]  ⁶ tn Grk “the elect.”

[2:10]  ⁷ tn Grk “with eternal glory.”

[2:11]  ⁸ sn This saying (Grk “the saying”) refers to the following citation. See 1 Tim 1:15; 3:1; 4:9; Titus 3:8 for other occurrences of this phrase.

[2:11]  ⁹ sn The following passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.