What Does 1 Corinthians 10:8 Mean?
Let us not prostitute ourselves, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell.
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
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.THE KEY
The verb for “commit fornication” belongs to a Greek word-family that names both the conduct and its practitioner, while the verse shows the cost reaching beyond those directly involved.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader as part of an “us”: sexual unfaithfulness can carry consequences beyond the people directly involved. Its stark number and single day hold the scale and speed of that harm in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that sexual betrayal affects only the people directly involved.
THE ROOT
πορνεύω
porneuō
GROWS FROM
πορν-
porne- word family
Sexual immorality; this Greek word-family names the conduct and related practitioners.
“prostitute ourselves” in this verse is porneuō. Here the verb names an act, while its relatives also name the conduct and a person who practices it. That family makes the act legible as more than an isolated moment, matching the verse’s abrupt communal count.
ALSO GROWS
porneia: Sexual immorality.
πορνεία
The related noun names the conduct expressed by the verb in this verse.
pornos: A person who practices sexual immorality.
πόρνος
The same word-family can name a practitioner as well as the act, linking conduct with its agent.
THE PATTERN
A breach within a people can carry consequences beyond the people who enact it.
And Israel settled in Shittim, and the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab.But the children of Israel broke trust with the devoted thing, for Achan, son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took from the devoted thing, and the burning of the LORD's anger flared against the children of Israel.Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?THE THREAD
And Israel settled in Shittim, and the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab.Numbers names the same act with זָנָה (zanah), “to commit sexual unfaithfulness,” and places it among the people rather than in isolation. That shared setting sharpens the verse’s warning: the consequences can reach beyond those directly involved.
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