Verse 4 is the last link in a participial chain that began in v. 2 and depends on the single imperative πληρώσατε (‘fill up my joy’). Paul has stated the goal positively (one mind, one love, v. 2), then negatively (nothing from rivalry or empty glory, v. 3a), then positively again (in humility considering one another as surpassing yourselves, v. 3b). Verse 4 restates that last point in terms of attention: what you keep your eye on.

Three things carry the weight:

1. σκοποῦντες is a watchman’s word — sustained, deliberate attention with a view to action, not passing interest.
2. ἕκαστοι appears twice, both times plural. Paul refuses to let a corporate exhortation dissolve into anonymity: the duty lands on every single person, and the repetition is emphatic rather than accidental.
3. καὶ in the second clause (‘but also the interests of others’) is the theological hinge, and it is textually contested. With it, Paul relativizes self-interest; without it, he abolishes it. The manuscript evidence favors keeping it.

The verse is grammatically elliptical — the second half has no verb at all — and a faithful rendering should let the reader feel that clipped, hammering quality rather than smoothing it into a full sentence.

σκοπέω belongs to the σκοπός (‘mark, target’) family: to look at something fixedly, to keep it in view, to have it as one’s aim. BDAG gives ‘look (out) for, notice, keep one’s eyes on.’ It is not the neutral βλέπω (‘see’) nor the intellectual νοέω. Elsewhere in Paul it consistently denotes watchful, consequential attention: Rom 16:17 (‘keep an eye on those who cause divisions’), Phil 3:17 (‘watch those who walk thus’), 2 Cor 4:18 (‘we are not looking at what is seen’), Gal 6:1 (σκοπῶν σεαυτόν, ‘watching yourself’).

In the LXX the cognate σκοπός is the watchman on the wall (2 Sam 13:34; Ezek 3:17), and σκοπεύω is his act of scanning the horizon. That is the flavor here: the Philippians are to be posted as sentries over each other’s welfare.

The present aspect matters. This is not ‘take a look at others’ concerns’ but an ongoing disposition of attention. ‘Fix your attention on’ or ‘keep an eye on’ preserves both the intensity and the durativity; a bare ‘look to’ is thinner than the Greek.

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The neuter plural article with a genitive (τὰ ἑαυτῶν, τὰ ἑτέρων) is standard Greek idiom for ‘the affairs / concerns / interests belonging to X.’ Paul uses exactly this construction again in this chapter at v. 21 — οἱ πάντες γὰρ τὰ ἑαυτῶν ζητοῦσιν, οὐ τὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (‘they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ’) — which is decisive for how to render it here. The vocabulary of v. 4 is deliberately picked up when Paul contrasts Timothy with everyone else, and again in the hymn at v. 6–7, where Christ is the one who did not grasp at what was his own.

The phrase is broad on purpose: not merely ‘advantage’ or ‘profit’ (which would narrow it to material self-interest), but the whole sphere of what concerns a person. English ‘interests’ is the least lossy option, provided the reader does not hear only financial interests.

ἑτέρων, not ἄλλων. ἕτερος properly marks the other party — the one over against me — rather than simply an additional item in a series. Coming immediately after ἀλλήλους (‘one another’) in v. 3, it keeps the focus inside the congregation: these are the fellow members whose concerns are to be watched.

Note also that ἑαυτῶν is a third-person reflexive doing second-person duty (‘your own’), which is unremarkable in Koine but worth flagging for readers tracking pronouns.

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ἕκαστος (‘each’) is normally singular even when the group is plural; the plural ἕκαστοι is comparatively rare, and Paul’s use of it twice in one short clause is striking. BDF notes the plural occurs where the distributive is applied to groups or where each member of a plurality is individually in view. Here it individuates the exhortation: a command to the assembly could be satisfied by someone else, so Paul pins it on every person present, twice.

The repetition also does structural work. The second clause has no verb — ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἑτέρων ἕκαστοι — and the repeated ἕκαστοι functions as the balancing weight against the first ἕκαστοι, so that the two halves read as a matched pair:

not — the things of themselves — each one — watching but also — the things of others — each one

A rendering that supplies a verb in the second half (‘but let each of you look also to…’) is doing English work the Greek leaves undone. Better to repeat ‘each of you’ and let the ellipsis stand.

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σκοποῦντες is a nominative plural present participle with no finite verb of its own in v. 3–4. Two accounts are available, and they yield nearly the same practical sense:

1. The participle chain (ἔχοντες, φρονοῦντες v. 2; ἡγούμενοι v. 3; σκοποῦντες v. 4) hangs on the imperative πληρώσατε in v. 2, spelling out the manner in which the Philippians are to complete Paul’s joy.
2. The participle is independently imperatival — a well-attested Koine construction, arguably Semitically influenced, common in paraenesis (cf. Rom 12:9–19; 1 Pet 2:18; 3:1).

The negation with μή rather than οὐ is expected either way: μή is the regular negative with participles in Koine, and it is obligatory where the force is volitive.

The practical translation consequence: the clause should read as a command, not as a description. Rendering it as a bare participle in English (‘not looking to your own interests…’) preserves the syntax but can sound merely descriptive; the imperatival force is best carried by keeping the participial shape while allowing the surrounding imperative to govern it in the reading text.

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The second clause reads ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἑτέρων in NA28. The adverbial καί (‘also’) is present in P46, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and the great majority of witnesses; it is omitted in Vaticanus and a scattering of others, and some witnesses vary the word order.

The theological stakes are unusually high for such a small word:

• With καί: ‘not fixing your attention on your own interests, but also on the interests of others.’ Paul relativizes and subordinates self-interest; he does not deny that a person legitimately attends to his own affairs. This coheres with v. 12 (‘work out your own salvation’) and with v. 3’s comparative ἡγούμενοι ὑπερέχοντας — a comparison presupposes that both parties count.
• Without καί: ‘not fixing your attention on your own interests, but on the interests of others.’ A flat exclusion of self-regard.

External evidence clearly favors retention, and the omission is easily explained as a scribal sharpening — a copyist tightening Paul’s ethic into something more absolute — or as simple haplography after ἀλλά. Internal evidence points the same way: the harder, less tidy reading is the one with καί, since the more rigorous ethic is what a later hand would prefer.

A further, smaller variant: several witnesses read the singular σκοπῶν or substitute ἕκαστος for ἕκαστοι, and some read ἄλλων for ἑτέρων — all secondary smoothings of an admittedly awkward clause. The awkwardness is original.

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Verse 4 is not a detached moral maxim. It is the last rung before τοῦτο φρονεῖτε (v. 5) and the hymn that follows, and its vocabulary is chosen so that Christ becomes the demonstration of it:

• v. 4 τὰ ἑαυτῶν — what is one’s own; v. 6 Christ did not treat equality with God as something to be seized and held (οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο).
• v. 3 ἡγούμενοι / v. 6 ἡγήσατο — the same verb of reckoning, applied first to the congregation, then to Christ.
• v. 3 ταπεινοφροσύνῃ / v. 8 ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτόν — the noun in the exhortation, the verb in the narrative.

So the sequence is: attend to others’ concerns (v. 4) → have this mind (v. 5) → because this is precisely what the pre-existent Christ did (v. 6–8). Paul’s ethics here are not grounded in prudence but in the shape of the incarnation.

The patristic reading runs the same way. Chrysostom, in his homilies on Philippians, ties v. 4 directly to Christ’s self-emptying and insists the command does not forbid care for oneself but forbids making one’s own concerns the horizon of one’s attention. Ambrosiaster and Theodoret likewise read the clause with ‘also’ and take it as ordering, not abolishing, self-regard. That the early commentators uniformly assume the καί is itself a small piece of evidence for the reading.

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• σκοποῦντες → ‘fixing your attention on’ / ‘looking to’. The literal register keeps ‘keeping in view’ to mark the watchman sense; the modern rendering uses ‘fixing your attention on’ because bare ‘looking to’ underplays the deliberateness. Not ‘looking out for’ in the modern colloquial sense of ‘protecting,’ which over-reads.
• τὰ ἑαυτῶν → ‘your own interests’, with the bracketed literal ‘the things of themselves’ preserving the reflexive and the neuter plural. ‘Interests’ over ‘advantage’ (too narrowly self-serving) and over ‘things’ (too vague in modern English).
• ἕκαστοι → ‘each of you’, twice. Retaining both occurrences is a deliberate cost to English smoothness, paid to preserve the individuating emphasis and the two-beat structure.
• καί → ‘also’, retained. See the textual section.
• The second clause is left verbless in the literal rendering to expose the ellipsis; the modern rendering carries the verb over implicitly rather than restating it.

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