What Does 1 Corinthians 11:12 Mean?
For as the woman is out of the man, so also is the man through the woman; but all things are out of God.
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
For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.THE KEY
The same Greek word, ἐκ (ek, from or out of), links the woman’s human origin to God as the source of all things.
THE MEANING
Your existence comes through human relationship: the woman is from the man, and the man comes through the woman. The verse uses ἐκ (ek, from or out of) for source and διά (dia, through or by) for passage, then uses ἐκ (ek, from or out of) again to name God as the source of all things. Human life passes through one another; its ultimate source is God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that either man or woman is self-originating: each life comes through another, and all things come from God.
THE ROOT
ἐκ
ek
GROWS FROM
ἐκ
ek
The Greek preposition ἐκ (ek) means from or out of, marking a source or origin.
The verse uses ἐκ (ek, from or out of) both for the woman’s relation to the man and for all things’ relation to God. The English “of” carries the wording, while διά (dia, through or by) marks the woman as the passage through whom the man comes.
ALSO GROWS
ekporeuomai: Go out, proceed.
ἐκπορεύομαι
This compound carries the sense of movement outward from a source, echoing the verse’s language of origin.
ekgonos: Offspring, descendant.
ἔκγονος
This compound names someone who comes from another, bringing the verse’s source language into the line of human generation.
THE PATTERN
Human existence passes through relational origins, while its ultimate source remains God.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for out of man she was taken.Yet neither is the man apart from the woman, nor the woman apart from the man, in the Lord.For in him we live and move and are; as some of your own makers have said, for we are also his offspring.THE THREAD
But to us there is one God, the Father, out of whom are all things, and we into him, and one Lord, Jesus the Anointed One, through whom are all things, and we through him.The Greek uses ἐξ (ex, from or out of), a form of ἐκ (ek, from or out of), for the source of all things, and δι’ (di’, through or by), a form of διά (dia, through or by), for the one through whom they come. The same source-and-passage structure opens this verse: a life comes through another, while its source lies with God.
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