Paul prays that he will not find the Corinthians guilty as he has accused them of being. He would rather be found to have been wrong in his charges against them and seem to be a failure as an apostle, than for them to be found guilty of sins.

But: although the conjunction used here is often omitted in English versions, it marks something of a contrast between Paul’s expectations for the Corinthians (recognition that he is not a failure) and his own action (prayer). Anchor Bible renders it “yet.”

We pray: if this is an epistolary plural (see 13.4), it will be correct to use the first person singular pronoun in this verse and in verses 8 and 9 (so Nueva Biblia Española, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Moffatt, and An American Translation).

Not that …: the words that follow the dashes in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation may need to be translated as a separate sentence in many languages. They indicate the purpose of his prayer, and this is framed both negatively and positively. One may say “we don’t pray like this in order to justify ourselves, but to get you to do what is right, even if we appear to be failures.” Another possible model showing more clearly the continuation of the testing theme can be as follows: “we are not trying to make ourselves look good, but we pray that you will do what is right even if people think that we have failed the test.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellingworth, Paul. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .