7:16a–b
‘Never again will they hunger, and never will they thirst: The Greek words are literally “They will hunger no more and thirst no more” (as in the New Revised Standard Version). The phrase “no more” is repeated to emphasize that phrase. The repeated words in the Greek makes the two clauses poetic. For example:
Those people will never be hungry again, and they will never be thirsty again (New Century Version)
But in some languages it is more natural not to repeat the words. For example:
They will never hunger or thirst again (New Jerusalem Bible)
7:16c–d
nor will the sun beat down upon them, nor any scorching heat: These two clauses have a similar meaning. Together they emphasize that the believers will not suffer from the hot sun anymore. John probably implies a complete lack of suffering or trouble here, but the English versions all translate the Greek literally. Other ways to translate these words are:
Neither the sun nor any burning heat will ever overcome them (God’s Word)
-or-
neither sun nor any scorching heat will burn them (Good News Translation)
-or-
The sun will not hurt them, and no heat will burn them (New Century Version)
nor any scorching heat: The phrase “will…beat down upon them” is implied from 7:16c. But it is not repeated here in the Greek or in the Berean Standard Bible. In some languages it is more natural to repeat some or all of that phrase. For example:
nor will any scorching heat ⌊beat upon them⌋
scorching heat: This phrase refers to heat that can burn. For example:
burning heat (God’s Word)
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