What Does 1 Corinthians 10:21 Mean?
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot share in the Lord's table and the table of demons.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.THE KEY
A partaker shares in a table’s source, so the verse makes communion an allegiance that cannot be split.
THE MEANING
This verse names a real incompatibility: the Lord’s cup and the demons’ cup bind participation to different sources. Sharing a table is not empty contact; it joins the participant to what the meal represents. Rival allegiances cannot be made interchangeable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred eating is only a private ritual, with no binding relation to what it honors.
THE ROOT
μετέχειν
metechein
GROWS FROM
μετέχω
metechō
To have a share with; to participate.
“share in” in this verse is metechein. The verb carries the sense of having a share with something. Its related words name a partner and a shared participation, revealing that eating at a table can mean joining what that table represents.
ALSO GROWS
metochos: A partner or sharer.
μέτοχος
The participant is a partner in what the table serves.
metochē: Participation or a share.
μετοχή
This names the shared portion that makes the meal an act of communion.
THE PATTERN
Eating and drinking at a sacred table enact participation in the power or covenant that the table represents.
They yoked themselves to Baal-peor, and ate the slaughtered offerings for the dead.Look at Israel according to the flesh. Are not those who eat the slain offerings sharers in common of the altar?Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a sharing in common of the blood of the Anointed One? Is not the bread that we break a sharing in common of the body of the Anointed One?THE THREAD
For there is one bread, and we, being many, are one body, since we all share in the one bread.The same Greek verb for partaking appears here and in the warning: sharing a table makes participation real. Here the shared bread forms one body; the next verse presses the implication that the table’s source matters.
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