What Does 1 Corinthians 14:10 Mean?
There are, perhaps, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without voice.
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
There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.THE KEY
The Greek repeats one sound-root in “voices” and “without signification,” binding a voice to the meaning it carries.
THE MEANING
You live among many kinds of voices, and difference does not make any of them empty of meaning. A voice can carry something real before its sense is clear to you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a voice you cannot understand has nothing to say.
THE ROOT
φωνῶν
phōnōn
GROWS FROM
Greek stem φων- (phōn-), with privative ἀ- in ἄφωνον
Sound, voice; with ἀ-, without voice or sound, and in this context, without meaning.
“voices / signification” in this verse is phōnōn. The Greek sets phōnōn (“voices”) beside aphōnon (“without voice,” and here “without meaning”), repeating the φων- sound-root where English separates “voices” from “signification.” The wordplay holds audible voice and intelligible meaning close together: a voice unfamiliar to you still carries something to be understood.
ALSO GROWS
phōnē: Voice, sound
φωνή
This is the singular form behind “voices”; the verse speaks of many kinds of audible expression.
aphōnos: Voiceless, soundless; in context, without intelligible meaning
ἄφωνος
This is the form rendered “without signification,” echoing the voice-root in the preceding phrase.
phōneō: To sound, call, or speak
φωνέω
This related verb shows the same root moving from a voice or sound to the act of making it heard.
THE PATTERN
Meaning travels through voices, becoming audible in different ways to different hearers.
There is no speech and no word where their voice is not heard.How do we each hear them in our own tongue, in which we were born?My sheep hear and respond to my voice, and I perceive them, and they follow me.THE THREAD
And even things without a living soul, giving sound, whether pipe or harp, unless they give a separation in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or what is harped?The Greek uses the same φων- voice-and-sound root in “voices” here and “giving sound” there. The pipe and harp make the claim audible: distinct sound carries something that can be recognized.
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