“The tempter might have tempted” provokes the question: “What else
would one expect the tempter to do?” How is the translator to avoid the
flatness and redundancy of this expression? The question is not only stylistic;
it is a question about what precisely Paul meant. One partial answer is that he
was using “the Tempter” as a proper name or title of Satan (in the same way as
“the Baptizer” became a title of John the Baptist). That is why TEV (cf. FrCL SpCL) has the Devil,
and BJ and TOB have “the Tempter” with explanatory notes. A second factor is
that the verb tempted, in the mood
and tense used here, implies a real event at a specific point of time, not
something like “lest perchance the devil might tempt you.” This is brought our
by TEV’s pluperfect had tempted, and still more clearly by BJ’s “already.” GeCL’s “the tempter could have brought you to (a) fall” makes
explicit the fear that the Thessalonians had not only been tempted, but that
they had given in to the temptation. This meaning is not normally included in
the meaning of “tempt,” but the last part of the verse virtually demands it
here. One other possible rendering is: “What if the devil had tempted you in
such a way as to make all our work useless?” The lack of explicit connections
in this verse reflects the tension of the situation. Even the memory of his
anxiety seems to start Paul’s thought moving faster than he can dictate.
It is extremely difficult in some languages to render the type of
exclamation occurring in the last sentence of verse 5, Surely it could not be that the Devil had tempted you, and all our work
had been for nothing! This exclamation reflects his deep concern.
Accordingly, it may be necessary to use a direct statement, as in the Greek
text, introduced by a verb of “worry,” “concern,” or “constant thinking about,”
for example, “I could not keep from worrying that the Devil had tempted you and
all our work had been for nothing,” or “I kept asking myself whether perhaps
the Devil had tempted you.…” (Paul Ellingworth and Eugene Albert
Nida, A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians [UBS Handbook
Series; New York: United Bible Societies, 1976], 57)
