To Burn or To Boast? (1 Cor 13:3)

The older NASB has “surrender my body to be burned,” but in their update, translated “so that I may glory.”

Metzger (Textual Commentary) argues that it is more likely that the original καυχήσωμαι (“to boast”) was changed to καυθήσομαι (“to burn”) once martyrdom by burning became more frequent. His argument seems conclusive.

But there remains the NIV’s, “give over my body to hardship.” I suspect — I was not on the committee when this decision was made — that the reason for adding “to hardship” was because the simple word-for-word translation makes no sense. The CSB’s, “If I give over my body to boast” doesn’t really convey meaning, but it does make sense to give yourself over to hardship so that you can boast about it (in Paul’s positive sense of boasting; cf. 2 Cor 8:24; Phil 2:16; 1 Thess 2:19; 2 Thess 1:4). So “to hardship” was probably added to make sense of the verse, the idea supplied by context. (Doug Moo, the Chair of the CBT, just confirmed that this is correct.)

The expansive NLT makes this point: “If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”

This illustrates an important lesson for the preacher. If you are an expository preacher trying to explain the meaning of the text, you should always check multiple translations. I could imagine a difficult situation where someone is preaching out of the ESV, and everyone in the audience who has an NIV would have no idea what you're talking about. “Why is he preaching about being burned and not about boasting?”

Aren't you glad we have multiple translations so we can decide whether Paul is talking about martyrdom or boasting?