What Does 1 Corinthians 14:26 Mean?
What then is it, brothers? When you gather together, each of you has a song, has a teaching, has an unveiling, has a tongue, has a carrying across. Let all things become for the building up.
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
How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.THE KEY
“Edifying” means house-building: every voice in the gathering becomes material for a shared dwelling.
THE MEANING
When you gather, what each person brings has a place within one shared purpose: strengthening the whole. A song, teaching, tongue, revelation, or interpretation finds its measure in what it builds among you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a gathering succeeds when each person displays what they can do; its measure is what the contributions build together.
THE ROOT
οἰκοδομή
oikodomē
GROWS FROM
οἰκοδομ- (oikos, “house” + domeō, “build”)
To build a house; by extension, building up.
“for the building up” in this verse is oikodomē. The word rendered “edifying” carries the image of constructing a dwelling. The many forms of expression named in the verse become parts of one structure when they strengthen the gathering.
ALSO GROWS
oikodomeō: To build; to build up or edify.
οἰκοδομέω
The related verb makes the image active: a contribution can help build up the people gathered.
oikodomos: Builder.
οἰκοδόμος
The same word family names the builder, linking the gathering’s building-up to the work of constructing a house.
THE PATTERN
What each person brings takes shape as a shared dwelling when it supports the whole.
from whom the whole body, joined together and knit by every joint that supplies, according to the working in the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.Wisdom builds her house; she hews out her seven pillars.THE THREAD
from whom the whole body, joined together and knit by every joint that supplies, according to the working in the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.“Edifying” here and “the edifying” in Ephesians come from the same Greek word family, οἰκοδομ- (oikodom-, house-building). Ephesians opens the image further: every part supplies something, and the whole grows as it builds itself up in love.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us