What Does 1 Corinthians 13:11 Mean?
When I was an infant, I spoke as an infant, thought as one, and counted as one; but when I became a man, I have made idle the things of the infant.
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
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.THE KEY
Maturity arrives when the child’s way of speaking, perceiving, and reasoning no longer governs the whole.
THE MEANING
The ways you once spoke, understood, and reasoned belong to a real stage of becoming, but they do not have to remain your measure. As you come into maturity, that earlier frame loses its rule over you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that growth means endlessly adding to the child’s way of seeing; a fuller state can make that old frame inoperative.
THE ROOT
κατήργηκα
katērgēka
GROWS FROM
ἀργ-
arg-
The word family carries the sense of idleness or inactivity; καταργέω means to render something inactive or bring it to an end.
“made idle” in this verse is katērgēka. The same verb describes the partial being “done away” in the previous verse. Here the child’s speech, understanding, and reasoning reach a point where they no longer operate as the whole frame.
ALSO GROWS
argos: Idle, inactive
ἀργός
The word’s underlying image is a mode that has stopped functioning.
argia: Idleness, inactivity
ἀργία
It echoes the sense of a former way becoming inactive rather than continuing to govern.
katargeō: Render inactive, abolish
καταργέω
This is the verb translated “put away,” linking maturity with an earlier mode losing its operation.
γέγονα
gegona
GROWS FROM
γεν-/γιν- (gen-/gin-)
Come into being; become.
“became” in this verse is gegona. The verb presents becoming as arrival into a state. The verse turns on that change of state: as maturity comes into view, the earlier way no longer defines the whole.
ALSO GROWS
genesis: Origin, beginning, coming into being
γένεσις
It shares the language of coming into existence or taking shape.
genos: Kind, lineage, family
γένος
It carries the sense of a formed kind or belonging that has come to be.
THE PATTERN
A fuller state changes which ways of seeing and responding can govern.
Surely I level and hush my living soul, like a weaned child upon his mother; like one weaned upon me, my living soul.Brothers, do not become children in mind, but in evil be infants, and in mind become full-grown.But firm food is for the complete, for those who through practice have their senses exercised to sift good from evil.THE THREAD
But when the whole comes, what is in pieces shall be made idle.“Done away” translates the same Greek verb, καταργέω (katargeō), as “put away” here. Verse 10 names what becomes inactive when the complete arrives; verse 11 gives that shift a human shape.
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