What Does 1 Corinthians 7:16 Mean?
For what do you know, wife, whether you will deliver your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will deliver your 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
For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?THE KEY
The verse holds a spouse’s deliverance as possible while refusing to make the other spouse its guarantor.
THE MEANING
Your presence may be one path through which your spouse is brought out, but you cannot know that outcome. The repeated question leaves another person’s deliverance beyond your certainty.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that love or closeness can guarantee another person’s deliverance: the verse asks whether it will happen, not promising that it will.
THE ROOT
σώσεις
sōseis
GROWS FROM
σώζω
sōzō
Rescue; bring into safety.
“deliver” in this verse is sōseis. The verb belongs to the same word family as deliverance and deliverer, so “save” carries the sense of being brought out into safety. Here the same verb appears in both questions, but neither question claims the outcome as certain.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēria: Deliverance; rescue.
σωτηρία
The related noun names the deliverance that the verse leaves open as a possibility.
sōtēr: Deliverer; rescuer.
σωτήρ
The related noun names the one who brings rescue, sharpening the question of whether a spouse can be that means of deliverance.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance opens a way out of danger, but no human being can claim certainty over its source or outcome.
To the weak I became as they are, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might deliver some.Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.Let him know that the one who turns back one of those who miss the mark from the wandering of his way will deliver a living soul from death, and will cover a multitude of shortcomings.THE THREAD
And they said, Lean your weight on the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, and you will be delivered, you and your house.Acts uses the same Greek verb, σώζω (sōzō), and places it beside a household. Here that deliverance word appears between spouses as a question, leaving the possibility visible without turning it into a guarantee.
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