Colossians 1

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Greeting

¹ Paul, an apostle of Yeshua the Messiah through the will of Elohim, and Timothy the brother, ² to the saints and faithful brothers in the Messiah who are in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from Elohim our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

Thanksgiving and prayer

³ We give thanks to the Elohim and Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, praying always for you, ⁴ since we heard of your faith in the Messiah Yeshua and of the love for all the saints, ⁵ because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, ⁶ which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bearing fruit and increasing, as it is also among you, since the day you heard and knew the grace of Elohim in truth; ⁷ as you also learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of the Messiah on your behalf, ⁸ who also declared to us your love in the Spirit.

⁹ For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; ¹⁰ that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of Elohim; ¹¹ strengthened with all might, according to the might of His glory, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; ¹² giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light, ¹³ who delivered us from the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, ¹⁴ in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The preeminence of the Messiah

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible Elohim, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For in Him all things were created, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷ And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And He is the head of the body, the assembly; He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. ¹⁹ For in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens.

²¹ And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled ²² in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and above reproach in His sight, ²³ if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Paul's labor for the assembly

²⁴ Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of the Messiah, for the sake of His body, which is the assembly, ²⁵ of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from Elohim which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of Elohim, ²⁶ the mystery which has been hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. ²⁷ To them Elohim willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is the Messiah in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸ Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in the Messiah Yeshua. ²⁹ To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.

Notes

• 1:1 Colossae was a small city in the Lycus valley of Phrygia, near Laodicea and Hierapolis (4:13). Paul had not visited it (2:1); the assembly there had learned the gospel from Epaphras, one of their own (1:7; 4:12). Josephus reports that a king of Syria settled two thousand Jewish families in Phrygia and Lydia more than two centuries earlier, and many think the believers met the gospel in a region with a sizable Jewish community. Paul writes from imprisonment (4:3, 18), sending the letter with Tychicus and Onesimus (4:7-9), with whom the letters to Philemon and to the Ephesians are closely linked. In verse 2 the words "and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah" are in the Majority Text, which the TRB follows; many modern Bibles leave them out.
• 1:13 Verses 12-14 tell the believers' story in the words of Israel's exodus. "The inheritance" (klēros, "lot") is the word for the portions of the land given to the tribes, and for the inheritance that is Yahweh Himself (Deuteronomy 10:9); "delivered" and "redemption" recall Elohim's promise, "I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm" (Exodus 6:6). In verse 14 the Majority Text, which the TRB follows, reads "the redemption, the forgiveness of sins"; some older Bibles add "through His blood," words found in the parallel Ephesians 1:7.
• 1:15 "Image" recalls the creation of man "in the image of Elohim" (Genesis 1:27); Paul calls the Son the image of the invisible Elohim. "Firstborn" in the Scriptures speaks of rank and inheritance as well as birth order: of David's heir Elohim says, "I also will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth" (Psalm 89:27). Verses 15-20 also echo what Proverbs 8:22-31 says of Wisdom, present with Yahweh before creation; many read verses 16-17 as saying that the Son is not part of creation but the One in whom, through whom and for whom it was made.
• 1:19 "Was pleased to dwell" recalls the Psalms, where Zion is "the mountain Elohim has desired for His dwelling" and "Yahweh will dwell there forever" (Psalm 68:16); the ancient Greek translation of that verse uses the same two verbs as Paul. What Elohim did in choosing a dwelling among Israel, Paul says, He has done fully in the Messiah, as again in 2:9. The Greek has no named subject here; "all the fullness" is the subject.
• 1:24 Paul does not say that the Messiah's suffering on the cross was insufficient; this chapter has just said that peace was made "through the blood of His cross" (verse 20). Many understand "the afflictions of the Messiah" as the sufferings His people bear as His body, since the risen Yeshua asked Saul, "why are you persecuting Me?" (Acts 9:4); others think of a measure of afflictions expected before the end, which Paul gladly takes upon himself.
• 1:27 "Mystery" (mystērion) is the word the Greek of Daniel uses for the Aramaic raz, a secret purpose of Elohim made known in His time (Daniel 2:18-19, 28). Here the mystery is that the Messiah dwells among "the nations" (ta ethnē, the peoples other than Israel; older Bibles say "Gentiles"), so that they share in Israel's hope, as the prophets foresaw (Isaiah 49:6).

Philippians 4 · Colossians 2

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