What Does 1 Corinthians 6:8 Mean?
But you bend out of alignment and strip, and this against your brothers.
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
Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.THE KEY
The verse makes injustice tangible: you are not merely doing wrong, you are depriving people you name as family.
THE MEANING
You can wrong someone by taking what is theirs, even while calling them family. The verse holds the breach and the loss together: another person is left without what is due.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm shrinks when it happens within a family falls away: closeness does not make deprivation harmless.
THE ROOT
ἀποστερεῖτε
apostereite
GROWS FROM
στερε- (stere-), in ἀποστερέω (apostereō)
To deprive, keep from, or cause to lack.
“strip” in this verse is apostereite. “Defraud” carries the act of depriving someone, with the ἀπό prefix adding the sense of taking away. The word holds both the taking and the lack left behind.
ALSO GROWS
stereō: To deprive or keep from.
στερέω
It exposes the act under “defraud” as making another person lack what belongs to them.
sterēsis: Deprivation or lack.
στέρησις
The same word family names the resulting absence, showing what the taking leaves in its wake.
ἀδικεῖτε
adikeite
GROWS FROM
δικ- (dik-), from δίκη (dikē)
Right, justice, or what is due.
“bend out of alignment” in this verse is adikeite. The English “wrong” can sound like a vague mistake; the dik- family measures action against what is rightfully due. The next verb names the breach in concrete terms: another person is deprived.
ALSO GROWS
adikia: Injustice or wrongdoing.
ἀδικία
It names the state produced when action departs from what is right.
dikaiosynē: Justice, alignment with what is right.
δικαιοσύνη
Its shared dik- seed reveals the relationship between wrongdoing and alignment with what is due.
ἀδελφούς
adelphous
GROWS FROM
ἀδελφ-
adelph-
Sibling or kin.
“brethren” in this verse is adelphous. The word places the deprived person inside a relationship of kinship. The harm lands on people the verse names as family, not on an anonymous other.
ALSO GROWS
adelphē: Sister.
ἀδελφή
The same kinship word family includes sisters as well as brothers.
adelphotēs: Brotherhood or kinship community.
ἀδελφότης
It extends the sibling word into a shared community, making the relational reach of the verse visible.
THE PATTERN
Deprivation makes injustice visible wherever someone withholds what another is owed.
You shall not press a hired hand who is bowed down and needy, whether he is of your brothers or of your sojourners who are in your land within your gates.Do not hold back good from its owners, when your hand has the reach to do it.And the soldiers also asked him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said to them, Shake no one down, and accuse no one falsely, and let your pay be enough for you.THE THREAD
You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.Mark’s “Defraud not” is ἀποστερήσῃς (apostērēsēs, “defraud” or “deprive”), a form of the same verb ἀποστερέω (apostereō) used here. Mark places deprivation beside stealing and false witness, showing that defrauding is a distinct way of taking from another.
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