But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the holy place, but the place for the sake of the nation: In Revised Standard Version (and the Greek) both the nation and the place are objects of the verb choose. There is no problem with choosing a nation, but choosing a temple (as if there were others God could choose from) does present a problem. As long as the word place is used, we may assume that God chose this one place out of many other possibilities. However, Good News Bible identifies the place as the Temple, so it says “established his Temple” rather than “chose the place.” This loses some of the wordplay in Greek, but it is clear. Translators who find the prepositional phrase for the sake of difficult may consider the following models for this verse:

• The Lord did not choose his people in order to help the Temple. He established the Temple in order to help his people.

• … He chose the place for the Temple in order to help his people.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.