原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
不能保矣 Or Your Life Is Forfeit
汝若仍前不改，我亦不能解釋，不久天即誅之，性命不能保矣。」汝若仍前不改，我亦不能解释，不久天即诛之，性命不能保矣。」
逐句解 Line by line
汝若仍前不改，我亦不能解釋，不久天即誅之，性命不能保矣。」
汝若仍前不改，我亦不能解释，不久天即诛之，性命不能保矣。」
"But if you go on as before and do not change, then I cannot undo it either. Before long Heaven will strike you down, and your life will not be saved."
誅 is to put to death by authority — an execution rather than a killing, the word for a sentence carried out. 解釋 again in its older sense of undoing rather than explaining. The classical particle 矣 closing the sentence makes it a pronouncement.
And there is the other half of the offer. Change, or heaven will execute you.
It is not a threat Pilgrim is making; it is a forecast he is passing on. But the effect on the man kneeling in front of him is the same, and it complicates what follows. When the prefect converts in the next passage and the whole city with him, the reader is entitled to wonder how much of it is a change of heart and how much is fear of being struck down.
The chapter, to its credit, does not resolve that. It simply shows what he does next.