What Does 1 Corinthians 15:47 Mean?
The first human is of the ground, made of dust; the second human is the Lord from the heavens.
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
The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.THE KEY
The verse names two origins that shape human likeness: dust from the earth, and the Lord from heaven.
THE MEANING
Your human life has a real, embodied origin in the earth. Yet this verse also names the Lord from heaven as another human pattern, so dust is not the only likeness held before you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your earth-born limits tell the whole story of what a human can be.
THE ROOT
χοϊκός
choikos
GROWS FROM
χοῦς
choos
Dust, loose earth.
“made of dust” in this verse is choikos. The Greek word translated “earthy” means dust-made, linking the first man’s nature to the dust from which humanity is formed. English keeps “earth” and “earthy” together, but the Greek makes the relation more specific: he comes from the earth and bears the character of dust.
ALSO GROWS
choos: Dust, loose earth.
χοῦς
This is the dust-word behind “earthy,” recalling the human origin named in Genesis 2:7.
choikos: Dust-made, earthy.
χοϊκός
This is the verse’s description of the first man: his origin is also the mark of his nature.
οὐρανός
ouranos
GROWS FROM
οὐραν-
ouran-
Heaven, the heavens, or sky.
The next verse uses ἐπουράνιος (epouranios, heavenly), from the same heaven-word family. English shifts from “from heaven” here to “heavenly” there, while Greek keeps the shared source visible: the one from heaven gives the name for the likeness that follows.
ALSO GROWS
ouranos: Heaven, the heavens, or sky.
οὐρανός
This is the source named for the second man.
epouranios: Heavenly, belonging to heaven.
ἐπουράνιος
The same word family describes the heavenly likeness in the following verse.
THE PATTERN
Those who come from a source bear the likeness of that source.
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the soil is of the soil and speaks from the soil; the one who comes from the heavens is above all.And as we have worn the image of the one made of dust, let us also wear the image of the one from the heavens.THE THREAD
As is the one made of dust, so are those made of dust; and as is the one of the heavens, so are those of the heavens.The same Greek word for “earthy,” χοϊκός (choikos, dust-made), returns here beside the word for “heavenly,” ἐπουράνιος (epouranios, belonging to heaven). The contrast expands from where the two men come from to the likeness shared by those who belong to each.
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