What Does 1 Corinthians 6:7 Mean?
Already then, there is altogether a yielding among you, because you hold judgments with one another. Why not rather be bent out of alignment? Why not rather be stripped?
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
Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?THE KEY
The verse calls the lawsuit itself a defeat: a community can win a case and still lose its shared life.
THE MEANING
When a dispute with a brother becomes a lawsuit, the verse names the shared condition as a defeat before judgment is rendered. It holds the injury plainly in view while asking whether bearing wrong or deprivation costs less than turning a brother into an opponent. The fracture between people can matter more than the case’s result.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that winning the case means the conflict has been won: the verse names the lawsuit itself as a defeat.
THE ROOT
ἥττημα
hēttēma
GROWS FROM
ἡττάω
hēttaō
To be overcome, defeated, or come off worse.
“yielding” in this verse is hēttēma. Beneath “fault” is ἥττημα (hēttēma, defeat or loss), so the verse names an existing defeat within the community before any case is decided. The lawsuit is a shared diminishment, not merely an individual mistake.
ALSO GROWS
hēttaomai: To be defeated or come off worse.
ἡττάομαι
The verbal family makes the “fault” a defeat already occurring within the group.
hēttōn: Lesser, inferior, or worse.
ἥττων
This branch carries the sense of coming out diminished, which sharpens the verse’s picture of communal loss.
ἀδικεῖσθε
adikeisthe
GROWS FROM
δίκη
dikē
Right, justice, or judgment; ἀδικέω (adikeō) means to do or suffer wrong.
“be bent out of alignment” in this verse is adikeisthe. The verb ἀδικέω (adikeō, to do or suffer wrong) appears here as ἀδικεῖσθε (adikeisthe, you suffer wrong): one word-family holds both sides of injustice. Its branches show how wrongdoing and alignment turn on the same question of what is right.
ALSO GROWS
adikia: Injustice or wrongdoing.
ἀδικία
This branch names the harm contained in being wronged.
dikaiosynē: Alignment.
δικαιοσύνη
Its relation to δίκη (dikē, right or justice) brings the verse’s conflict into focus as a break from right alignment between people.
THE PATTERN
A conflict can deepen its damage when each person insists on returning injury.
Do not say, I will repay the evil; stretch yourself taut toward the LORD, and he will bring you out.And if anyone wants to take you to court and take your tunic, let your cloak go to him also.Give back to no one evil for evil. Look ahead to what is beautiful in the eyes of all people.THE THREAD
But you bend out of alignment and strip, and this against your brothers.The paired verbs ἀδικέω (adikeō, to do or suffer wrong) and ἀποστερέω (apostereō, to deprive or defraud) recur in 6:8 with their direction reversed: here the question is why they will not receive wrong and deprivation; next, they are the ones doing wrong and defrauding their brothers. The shared roots expose the reversal from resisting harm to inflicting it.
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