What Does 1 Corinthians 15:30 Mean?
And why do we stand in danger every hour?
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
And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?THE KEY
The question turns danger from a single crisis into an ongoing condition: every hour.
THE MEANING
The question speaks from inside a claim with real bodily stakes: danger keeps returning through the day. It does not explain the risk away or reduce it to an idea; it leaves the reader with the unanswered “why” at the center of exposed life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a true or meaningful conviction keeps the body beyond danger; the verse lets the risk itself remain real.
THE ROOT
κινδυνεύομεν
kindyneuomen
GROWS FROM
κινδυνεύω
kindyneuō
to be in danger, to incur risk
The Greek gathers the clause into one present verb: “we are in danger.” Its word family also names a trade at risk in Acts 19:27, showing that danger here is concrete exposure, not merely an inner feeling.
ALSO GROWS
kindynos: danger, risk
κίνδυνος
The related noun names the danger itself, making clear that the verse speaks of real exposure.
kindyneuō: to be in danger, to risk
κινδυνεύω
The verb describes an ongoing state, which fits the verse’s question about danger recurring hour after hour.
ὥραν
hōran
GROWS FROM
ὥρα
hōra
hour, time, or season
“hour” in this verse is hōran. Together with “every,” the word stretches the danger across the whole day rather than locating it in one crisis. The same word can mean a season, letting the phrase carry the sense of risk filling an entire span of time.
ALSO GROWS
hōra: hour, time, season
ὥρα
Its range makes the measure of danger temporal and sustained, not a single moment.
hōraios: timely, in season
ὡραῖος
This related word carries the sense of a season, echoing how the verse measures exposure across time.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly describes witness as lived amid bodily danger that can extend through the day and across many settings.
Indeed, for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.In walking the road often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own kin, in perils of the nations, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brothers.For to you it has been favored on behalf of the Anointed One, not only to trust him, but also to suffer for him.THE THREAD
So that not only is our part in danger of being spoken down, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis should be counted as nothing, and her greatness taken down, whom all Asia and the inhabited earth hold in awe.Both verses use κινδυνεύω (kindyneuō), the same verb for being in danger. Here the danger reaches a livelihood, showing how the shared word ties risk to the material structures a life depends on.
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