“through a glass darkly”

The verse

1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV):

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.

In the BSB:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; we see but a poor reflection; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

The KJV’s “through a glass, darkly” is one of the most-quoted phrases in English literature — Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film, countless essays, novels, sermons. The Greek behind it is more specific than the English.

The “glass”: a bronze mirror

The Greek word is esoptron (ἔσοπτρον). BDAG glosses it: a mirror. Ancient mirrors were not made of glass — silvered glass mirrors are a much later technology. First-century mirrors were polished bronze, copper, or silver. They reflected, but produced dim, indirect, distorted images compared to modern mirrors.

Esoptron appears once more in the New Testament — James 1:23, where someone hearing the word but not doing it is compared to a person who looks at their face in a mirror and immediately forgets what they look like. The James image relies on the same metal-mirror reality: looking and being able to walk away with a vague impression rather than a precise memory.

When Paul says “we see through a mirror,” the sense is by means of the mirror — looking at one’s own face indirectly, as one does in a metal mirror, with the limitations of the medium.

”Darkly”: en ainigmati — in a riddle

The Greek phrase translated “darkly” in the KJV is en ainigmati (ἐν αἰνίγματι). The noun ainigma gives us the English word “enigma.” It means a riddle, a puzzle, an indirect speech that requires interpretation.

The word does not mean dark in the colour sense. It means dark in the epistemic sense — obscure, indirect, requiring effort to understand. En ainigmati — “in a riddle, in an enigma” — describes seeing through a medium that does not present its content directly but mediates it through a puzzle.

Paul is using a hendiadys: the mirror image and the riddle image together describe one situation — present knowledge as indirect, mediated, puzzling. Future knowledge — prosōpon pros prosōpon, “face to face” — will be direct.

What modern translations do

The “darkly” / “dimly” choice flattens the riddle aspect. The NLT’s “indirect likeness” is closer to the Greek’s epistemic dimension. The KJV’s “darkly” is the most evocative phrase but the least literal.

What the verse is doing

The full verse contrasts present and future knowledge. Now: indirect, mirror-and-riddle, partial. Then: face to face, full knowledge “even as I am fully known” by God.

The point is not pessimistic about present knowledge; Paul thinks the partial knowledge is real. But it is mirror-knowledge, riddle-knowledge — and what comes will be different in kind, not just degree.

For the wider 1 Corinthians 13 context, see our passage entry.