What Does 1 Corinthians 5:1 Mean?
It is heard commonly that there is the trade of bodies among you, and such trade as is not even named among the nations, that one should hold his father's wife.
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
It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.THE KEY
The verse exposes a sexual rupture through the family bond it crosses and the shared name the community can bear.
THE MEANING
The verse brings a sexual relationship into the open and names its exact rupture: a man has his father’s wife. It sets that act beside a boundary so stark that it is not even named among the surrounding peoples. What the community carries in its midst shapes what its shared name can hold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A sexual relationship concerns only the two people involved. The verse makes the father-son bond part of what is crossed, placing the relationship within a wider household and community.
THE ROOT
πορνεία
porneia
GROWS FROM
πορν-
porn-
The Greek word family refers to prostitution and illicit sexual conduct.
“the trade of bodies” in this verse is porneia. The phrase “such fornication” repeats the same word, then makes the conduct concrete: a man has his father’s wife. The word opens into a breach of kinship, rather than leaving the act as an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
porneuō: to engage in sexual immorality
πορνεύω
The verb makes the conduct active: the category names an act, not just an accusation.
pornos: a sexually immoral person
πόρνος
The related noun shows how the same word family can name both conduct and the person associated with it.
ὀνομάζεται
onomazetai
GROWS FROM
ὀνομα-
onoma-
Name; naming or identifying something.
The Greek word for “named” comes from the word for “name.” The verse makes recognition part of its claim: this conduct has no place even in what the surrounding peoples name, yet it is present among the readers.
ALSO GROWS
onoma: name
ὄνομα
The noun beneath the verb points to the identity carried in a name.
onomazō: to name or mention
ὀνομάζω
The verb shows naming as the act of bringing something into public speech.
THE PATTERN
Sexual boundaries are drawn around kinship and communal identity, so a relationship becomes a public rupture.
Do not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. It is your father's nakedness.Cursed be he who lies with his father's wife, for he uncovers his father's wing. And all the people shall say, Amen.But fornication, and all uncleanness, or the grasping for more, let it not even be named among you, as becomes the set-apart ones.THE THREAD
But fornication, and all uncleanness, or the grasping for more, let it not even be named among you, as becomes the set-apart ones.“Fornication” in both verses translates the same Greek word, πορνεία (porneia), for illicit sexual conduct. Ephesians also echoes the language of naming, joining the act itself to what the community gives a place in its shared identity.
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