Pursuing Hospitality

Romans 12:13–14 reads:

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. ₁₄ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. (ESV)

The Greek word for “seek” or “practice” (NIV, NASB) in verse 13 is actually the same as the Greek word for “persecute” in verse 14. It is the verb diōkō (διώκω), which means “to pursue”, and is often used in the New Testament to mean “to persecute”.

The play on words is clearly intentional, and the idea is that we should show hospitality with the same zeal that our enemies have in persecuting us. Of course, these words would have been more impactful to the original audience of these words, since they were facing heavy persecution from family, friends, and the government.

However, the force of this literary feature in the original Greek text is lost in translation. Since the same Greek word is used twice in such close proximity, we could render it with the same English word:

Pursue hospitality. Bless those who pursue you.

However, in doing so, we lose the nuance that the word is being used to mean “persecute” in verse 14. Should we also consistently render diōkō as “pursue” in other places where it is being used to mean “persecute”?

Dilemmas like this cause translators to lament the limitations of translation, and hope that one day, through some other means, you too would be able to access and appreciate this interesting feature in the original text.