2
Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you: This is a typical blessing at the beginning of a Greek letter. It is like a prayer that God will provide the readers with mercy, peace, and love. Languages have different ways to express this type of prayer. For example:
I pray that God will greatly bless you with kindness, peace, and love! (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
May you receive more and more of God’s mercy, peace, and love. (New Living Translation (2004 Revision))
Mercy: In this context Mercy refers to the compassion and kindness that God shows toward those who need help. It also implies that he gives them the help that they need.
peace: The word peace in both Greek and English can refer to two different ideas:
(a) It can indicate an inner contentment and serenity. In this context, Jude’s readers could have peace because they knew that God had saved them and that he loved them.
(b) It can indicate peaceful relations with other people or with God.
Here Jude probably intended the first of these, inner peace.
love: This is the same kind of love as was mentioned in the note above at 1e.
be multiplied to you: The Greek verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates literally here as be multiplied to you may be expressed in English as:
abundantly
-or-
greatly
-or-
richly
-or-
more and more
Here are some options for translating this idea in the context of the whole verse:
• You may be able to translate “mercy,” “peace,” and “love” as nouns in your language. For example:
May mercy, peace and love from God be yours abundantly.
-or-
I pray that you will experience more and more of God’s mercy, peace and love.
• You may need to express “mercy,” “peace,” and “love” as verbal ideas. For example:
I pray that more and more God will be merciful to you, make you increasingly peaceful, and cause you to experience more deeply that he loves you.
© 2007 by SIL International®
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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.