This was for a class assignment, but I am so excited about it that I have to share my new insight with you!!!
1 Corinthians 13:12 is one of my favorite verses from a purely phonological point of view. Semantically, however, I have always struggled with it. Written in the King James Version, it reads “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Several elements of the structure of this verse are confusion. First of all, the amount of semi-colons and colons rather than periods to make separate sentences distracts the reader from the overall meaning. To better understand this verse, I will take it phrase by phrase.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly;” There are two ways to interpret this verse.For can be used in this context as a preposition or a conjunction. When used as a preposition, for clings to the word now, making the general meaning of the phrase to mean currently. However, if it is used as a conjunction, for stands apart from now, altering the focus of the phrase to the word now. This change in focus causes the reader to think that this sight is something new, something that we didn’t have before but we have now. It makes the most sense to choose the former definition due to the context. It simply doesn’t make sense that the new place of sight is dark. Thus, it must mean that the darkness is the current state. Darkly, though it looks like an adjective for the word class, is actually an adverb describing the way in which we see. Rearranged and reconstructed, we can understand this section of the verse to mean, roughly, “Currently we see life darkly, as if through a glass.”
“But then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” The word then really throws me off. Modern uses of the word then tend to connote something like next or at a time in the past like “Susie sneezed. Then she blew her nose.” Or “Oh yes, in 1970, I was a hippie then.” Here, however, the use of thenrefers to a future time. The use of the colon after the second face instructs the reader to assume that both parts of the semi-coloned phrase following it refer back to everything before the colon because it too is a phrase fastened together via semi-colon. I have always put “but then face to face” with the second half of the verse as I have done here in my discussion. It is more correct, though, to keep it with “for now we see through a glass, darkly.” Knowing this, my new personal interpretation of this verse is “Currently we see life darkly, as if through a glass. In the future, though, we will see God face to face. Right now, I only know parts of things. Then I will know everything and see everything clearly, and I will also be seen and understood fully.”
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