What Does 1 Corinthians 5:6 Mean?
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
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
Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?THE KEY
Leaven’s hidden force is not its size but its reach: a little of it works through the whole lump.
THE MEANING
A small harm does not stay in one corner of the life it touches; it works through the whole. So the confidence that the shared whole remains untouched is already exposed as a boast, not a fact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a small wrong stays personal and cannot affect the whole.
THE ROOT
ζύμη
zymē leaven
GROWS FROM
ζυμ-
zym-
Leaven; fermenting material that makes dough ferment.
The Greek noun ζύμη (zymē, leaven) belongs to the same word family as ζυμόω (zymoō, to leaven or ferment): the verse places the agent and its action side by side. Its force is not that the leaven is large, but that its fermenting work reaches the entire batch.
ALSO GROWS
zymoō: To leaven or ferment.
ζυμόω
This verb shares the root ζυμ- (zym-, leaven/ferment) with ζύμη (zymē, leaven), making the verse’s noun and action one family.
azymos: Unleavened; without leaven.
ἄζυμος
This word keeps the ζυμ- (zym-, leaven/ferment) root while naming the state in which leaven is absent.
THE PATTERN
A small, hidden influence can work through an entire whole, for harm or for growth.
A little leaven leavens the whole kneaded mass.Dead flies make the perfumer's oil stink; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and weight.Another parable he spoke to them. The governance of the heavens is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until all of it had risen.THE THREAD
Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even the Anointed One, our Passover, was slaughtered for us.The same word family returns in ζύμη (zymē, leaven) and ἄζυμος (azymos, unleavened): the old leaven is purged so the new lump appears as already unleavened. The change comes by removing what spreads through the whole, not by adding a new ingredient.
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