Additional Notes §16
§16 First Conclusion: Call to Rejoice (Phil. 3:1)
“With this communication about Epaphroditus now the epistle seems to be at an end” (Ewald, ad loc.). If so, nothing remains but a final word of greeting. The reader is therefore prepared for Finally.
3:1 / Finally: the natural inference from this phrase (drawn by most commentators) is that Paul is on the point of finishing his letter. If the letter be regarded as a unity, it must be assumed that something suddenly occurred to him which prompted the warning of verse 2 with its sequel.
The exhortation to rejoice is expressed in a word (Gk. chairete) which is also a common form of greeting: “hail” or (less often) “farewell.” The language here, Finally, my brothers, rejoice … (Gk. to loipon, adelphoi mou, chairete …), is very similar to that in 2 Corinthians 13:11 (Gk. loipon, adelphoi, chairete), where the sense is certainly “Finally, brothers, good-bye.” The main reason for not taking the present words in the same sense lies in the added phrase in the Lord (Gk. en kyriō; cf. 4:4). Rejoice in the Lord echoes an exhortation repeated in the Psalms (cf. Pss. 32:11; 33:1). The people of God rejoice in him because he is their “exceeding joy” (Ps. 43:4); cf. Rom. 5:11, “we … rejoice in God.” It is not necessary to give “in the Lord” its incorporative sense here.
The question now arises: what are the same things that Paul has written before and does not mind writing to you again? The reference might be to the exhortation to rejoice given already in 2:18 (cf. also 1:25; 2:28, 29), but it is difficult to see how a repeated exhortation to rejoice would be a safeguard for the Philippians. G. B. Caird explains that joy “is a safeguard against the utilitarian attitude which judges people and things wholly by the use that can be made of them” (ad loc.). On the other hand, F. W. Beare (ad loc.), regarding 3:2–4:1 as part of another Pauline letter that has been editorially interpolated between 3:1 and 4:2, takes the reference here to be Paul’s call for unity, already voiced in general terms in 2:1–4 and now about to be repeated with respect to two named individuals in 4:2. Yet another possibility is that the second half of 3:1 goes closely with the warning of 3:2 and refers to a similar warning given in an earlier letter, now lost (cf. J. H. Michael, ad loc.). On the whole, in spite of some difficulty, it seems best to understand the same things as the call for joy in 2:18 and elsewhere.
3:1 / In The New Testament: An American Translation the first clause is rendered: “Now, my brothers, good-bye, and the Lord be with you”; cf. E. J. Goodspeed, Problems of New Testament Translation, pp. 174, 175. “The Lord be with you” is an excessively free rendering of en kyriō “in the Lord.”
On the significance of Finally and the relevance of the same things, see (in addition to the commentaries and NT introductions) W. Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, pp. 71–74; he treats 3:2–4:3 and 4:8, 9 as part of a separate Pauline letter and argues against the division of v. 1 so as to relate its second sentence to what immediately follows, as suggested by R. A. Lipsius, F. Haupt, and P. Ewald (ad loc.).
It is a safeguard for you: lit., “for you it is safe” (Gk. asphales). V. P. Furnish (“The Place and Purpose of Philippians iii,” NTS 10 [1963–64], pp. 80–88) argues that the adjective asphalēs (not found elsewhere in Paul) means here “specific” or “dependable” (as in Acts 25:26) and (unconvincingly) that “to write the same things” (ta auta graphein) means “to give the same admonitions in writing as Timothy and Epaphroditus have been instructed to give you orally” (not, as in NIV, to write the same things to you again).
The words emoi men ouk oknēron, hymin de asphales (“not irksome for me, and safe for you”) may well form an iambic trimeter (quoted by Paul from some source or other), even if a purist would object to the caesura in the penultimate spondaic foot, as violating the “law of the final cretic.”