For if I cause you pain: most translations do not reflect the fact that the pronoun I is emphatic in Greek. The sense is “For if I, who ought to work for your joy, cause you pain….”

In this verse you is plural in the Greek, while the one whom I have pained is singular, as in Revised Standard Version. This combination can be misunderstood to mean that, if Paul causes pain to the Corinthian Christians, a single individual would make him glad. Though the Greek is singular in the second part of this verse, Good News Translation changes to the plural (“the persons”) in order to indicate that Paul is not here speaking about one specific person. Revised English Bible uses the pronoun “you” in both parts of the verse: “who is left to cheer me up, except you whom I have offended?” This latter rendering makes very clear that the same group of people is referred to in both parts of this sentence (see verse 3).

Paul’s question in this verse is a rhetorical one; the answer, the one whom I have pained, is provided in the question. Good News Translation provides a separate answer by changing the last part of the sentence into a statement. In some languages it may be more appropriate to use an emphatic statement in place of the question: “For if I were to cause you pain, there would certainly be no one left to make me happy, because you are the ones I have made sad.”

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 .