What Does 1 Corinthians 3:7 Mean?
So then neither is the one who plants anything, nor the one who gives to drink, but God, who makes it grow.
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
So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.THE KEY
The hands that tend life are not the source of its growth.
THE MEANING
Your hands can plant and water, but they do not contain the source of growth. God is the one making increase happen; the work of tending is real, while the power to make it grow belongs to God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that the person tending the work is its source, so the growth belongs to the planter or waterer.
THE ROOT
αὐξάνων
auxanōn
GROWS FROM
αὐξ-
aux-
Grow, increase, enlarge.
“who makes it grow” in this verse is auxanōn. The Greek form means the one making grow. Growth appears as God’s ongoing action, not something the planter or waterer manufactures.
ALSO GROWS
auxēsis: Growth, increase.
αὔξησις
This is the related noun for growth; Colossians uses it for the increase that comes from God.
auxanō: To grow, increase, make grow.
αὐξάνω
This is the verb behind the verse’s image of God as the one causing growth.
φυτεύων
phuteuōn
GROWS FROM
φυτ- (phyt-), related to φύω (phuō)
Plant; grow, spring forth, bring forth.
“planteth” in this verse is phuteuōn. The planting word belongs to a family tied to what grows and comes forth. The planter sets the seed in place, but the word’s growth-family points beyond the act of planting to what unfolds from it.
ALSO GROWS
phuō: Grow, spring forth, bring forth.
φύω
It names the growth latent in the image of planting, while the verse distinguishes tending from causing increase.
physis: Nature, natural constitution.
φύσις
This related word for nature carries the sense of what has arisen or grown, extending the planting image into the life that unfolds.
ποτίζων
potizōn
GROWS FROM
ποτ-
pot-
Drink, take in a drink.
“the one who gives to drink” in this verse is potizōn. The waterer is named by the act of giving drink. The word describes provision received by the plant, not the power that makes it grow.
ALSO GROWS
poma: Drink, beverage.
πόμα
This related word keeps the watering image connected to what is given to drink.
potērion: Drinking cup, cup.
ποτήριον
The drinking vessel belongs to the same word-family and underscores that the waterer’s role is to provide what can be received.
THE PATTERN
Those who tend life serve its growth; God is the one who gives it.
He makes the grass sprout for the cattle, and the herb for the service of humankind, to bring bread out from the earth.and he sleeps and wakes night and day, and the seed sprouts and stretches up, and he does not know how.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.THE THREAD
and not gripping the head, from whom the whole body, being fed through its joints and bonds, and being joined together, grows with the growth of God.Increaseth and increase translate forms from the same Greek growth-family as αὐξάνων (auxanōn), the one making grow in this verse. Colossians carries the image from a planted field to a joined body: nourishment and connection are present, while the increase comes from God.
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