God’s Husbandry

θεοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν συνεργοί· θεοῦ γεώργιον, θεοῦ οἰκοδομή ἐστε.

1 Cor 3.9 SBL Greek NT

This is really just a footnote to the previous post, but I just want to underline what happens when you are failing to follow the argument.

Nearly every translation renders the verse above as something like “we are God’s coworkers, you are God’s field, God’s building.”

Which is entirely tone-deaf. Only the King James (and not its descendant, the New King James) gets it right: “you are God’s husbandry, God’s building.”

The point is that both γεώργιον and οἰκοδομή are nouns of action “looking after a field, ie husbandry”, “act or manner of building, ie which gives you the ambiguous ‘building’ (not “building”, the thing, but “building”, the act).

In other words, we are God’s coworkers but He is the one who is doing the work.

And you can follow that all the way back to 1 Cor 1.10:

You need to get with the programme, guys, because there is only one thing that matters, and it isn’t cliques around Paul and Apollos and Cephas…