What Does 1 Corinthians 11:25 Mean?
In the same way, after supper, he also took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.
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
After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.THE KEY
The cup gives the covenant a visible, repeatable form: the bond is encountered through an act of remembrance.
THE MEANING
The covenant is named through blood and held in a cup, where the bond takes visible form. Each time the cup is drunk, the act gathers the reader into remembrance of Jesus and the life given in this covenant.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that remembrance is only a private thought: here memory takes the form of a shared, repeated act.
THE ROOT
διαθήκη
diathēkē
GROWS FROM
θη- (thē-), in τίθημι (tithēmi)
To set or place; by extension, to arrange or establish.
The noun translated “testament” is διαθήκη (diathēkē, covenant), related to διατίθημι (diatithēmi, to arrange or establish). This root family lets covenant carry the sense of a bond deliberately set in place, now made tangible in the cup.
ALSO GROWS
thēsis: A placing or setting.
θῆσις
The shared sense of setting helps show covenant as a bond established in a definite form.
diatithēmi: To arrange, establish, or make a covenant.
διατίθημι
This verb makes explicit the establishing sense carried in the covenant word.
ἀνάμνησις
anamnēsis
GROWS FROM
μνη- (mnē-), in μιμνῄσκω (mimnēskō)
To remember or bring to mind.
This root family holds remembering and reminding together. Because remembrance recurs with each drinking, memory here has a bodily rhythm as well as a place in the mind.
ALSO GROWS
mimnēskō: To remember or call to mind.
μιμνῄσκω
It shows the living verb beneath the act of remembrance named in the verse.
hypomimnēskō: To remind or bring to mind.
ὑπομιμνῄσκω
This branch reveals remembrance as something brought forward again, fitting the repeated act of drinking.
THE PATTERN
Covenant becomes tangible through signs and inscriptions that keep a bond present to those who share it.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.But this is the covenant I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will set my instruction within them, and write it upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Likewise also the cup after the meal, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.THE THREAD
This is the covenant I will set in place with them after those days, says the LORD, placing my instructions upon their hearts, and upon their minds I will write them;The same Greek word, διαθήκη (diathēkē, covenant), appears here, where the bond is written into the heart and mind. That opens the cup beyond an outward sign: the covenant it displays also reaches inward.
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