What Does 1 Corinthians 10:29 Mean?
The shared sight, I say, not your own but the other's. For why is my freedom judged by the shared sight of another?
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
Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience?THE KEY
Your liberty enters another person’s field of knowing, yet the verse questions whether that other conscience gets to judge it.
THE MEANING
Your freedom does not exist in a vacuum: another person’s conscience is present in the same moment. Yet the verse does not hand that conscience unquestioned authority; it asks why your liberty is being judged by it. The tension is real, another person matters, and your freedom remains yours.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
That another person’s conscience is the final measure of your freedom. The verse leaves that claim open to challenge.
THE ROOT
συνείδησις
syneidēsis
GROWS FROM
συν + οἶδα (syn + oida)
To know with; awareness held together with knowing.
“The shared sight, I say” in this verse is syneidēsis. “Conscience” carries the sense of knowing-with: an inner awareness that can enter the space between people. Here the verse names the other person’s knowing as part of the scene, while asking whether it should judge your liberty.
ALSO GROWS
synoida: I know with; I am conscious of.
σύνοιδα
This verbal form shows the shared knowing contained in “conscience,” which the verse places beside your liberty.
oida: Know; recognize.
οἶδα
This is the knowing within the compound: another person’s awareness is present, but the verse still questions its authority to judge.
THE PATTERN
Freedom in a shared life is held alongside its effect on another person.
But watch, lest somehow this right of yours become a stone for the weak to stumble over.But if your brother is pained because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not, by your food, make him lose his way, the one for whom the Anointed One died.Each of you, do not fix your eyes on your own things, but also on the things of others.THE THREAD
But this knowledge is not in everyone. For some, with their shared sight of the idol, eat until this hour what is slaughtered for an idol, and their weak shared sight is stained.The same Greek word for “conscience” appears here, where one person’s awareness is described as vulnerable to what they eat. Read beside it, 1 Corinthians 10:29 holds both the other person’s conscience and the question of who gets to judge your liberty.
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