What Does 1 Corinthians 5:10 Mean?
Yet not altogether with the traders of bodies of this world, or with those who hold more, or with the snatchers, or with the servants of images, for then you would have to go out of the world.
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
Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.THE KEY
To avoid every person marked by these patterns, you would have to leave the world itself, so total distance cannot be the measure of faithful life.
THE MEANING
Your life unfolds among people whose actions include sexual immorality, grasping for more, taking from others, and devotion to idols. This verse names the limit of total avoidance: keeping away from every person marked by these patterns would mean leaving the world. Contact is part of life in the world, while the conduct named remains what it is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that faithful living requires total distance from everyone caught in wrongdoing. The verse says that standard would require leaving the world.
THE ROOT
πλεονέκταις
pleonektais
GROWS FROM
πλέον + ἔχειν (pleon + echein)
More + have: one who reaches for an additional share.
“those who hold more” in this verse is pleonektais. The word carries a “more + have” idea: the appetite is for an added share. Its word-family also describes taking advantage of someone, linking coveting with grasping at another person’s portion.
ALSO GROWS
pleonexia: Greed, covetousness
πλεονεξία
Names the appetite itself: the craving to have more.
pleonekteō: Take advantage of, defraud
πλεονεκτέω
Shows how the desire for more can become gain at another person’s expense.
ἅρπαξιν
harpaxin
GROWS FROM
ἁρπάζω
harpazō
Seize, snatch, carry off.
“snatchers” in this verse is harpaxin. The word pictures a seizer, not simply someone who has money. Beside covetousness, it traces a movement from reaching for more to taking it.
ALSO GROWS
harpazō: Seize, snatch away
ἁρπάζω
Makes the taking implicit in the extortioner’s name an action.
harpagma: Something seized, plunder
ἅρπαγμα
Names what the act of seizing produces: something taken.
κόσμου
kosmou
GROWS FROM
κοσμ-
kosm-
Ordered arrangement; in this verse, the inhabited world.
The word can carry the sense of an ordered whole and commonly names the inhabited world. That scope sharpens the verse’s logic: avoiding every bearer of these patterns would mean leaving the shared human world itself.
ALSO GROWS
kosmeō: Arrange, put in order, adorn
κοσμέω
Shows the word-family’s connection to arrangement and order.
kosmios: Orderly, well-arranged
κόσμιος
Carries the same family’s sense of something ordered or fitting.
THE PATTERN
Complete withdrawal from every person involved in wrongdoing would mean leaving the world shared with them.
I do not ask that you lift them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil.I have not come to call the aligned, but those who miss the mark into turning.And seek the wholeness of the city where I have carried you away, and pray to the LORD for it, for in its wholeness you will have wholeness.THE THREAD
That no one step over and grasp more against his brother in any deed, because the Lord is the one who brings alignment out against all such, as we told you before and bore witness.The Greek verb πλεονεκτέω (pleonekteō, “take advantage by seeking more”) translated “defraud” belongs to the same word-family as πλεονέκτης (pleonektēs, “one grasping for more”) translated “covetous” here. The link shows how the appetite for an added share can take shape as gain at another person’s expense.
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