What Does 1 Corinthians 7:5 Mean?
Do not withhold from one another, unless you sound together for a season, so that you may make room for fasting and prayer, and come together again lest the Adversary test you for lack of grip.
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
Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.THE KEY
Even a spiritual pause from intimacy has a built-in return: it is agreed, temporary, and mutual.
THE MEANING
Your shared intimacy can pause for a bounded time of prayer, but the pause rests on mutual agreement and includes coming together again. The risk named is desire outrunning self-mastery, a vulnerability the verse addresses between both of you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devotion makes unilateral or indefinite withdrawal harmless: the pause is agreed, limited, and followed by return.
THE ROOT
συμφώνου
symphōnou
GROWS FROM
φωνή (phōnē), in the συμφων- family
Voice, sound; in this compound, agreement or harmony, sounding together.
“sound together” in this verse is symphōnou. The word translated “consent” carries the sense of being in accord. The pause is shaped by shared agreement, not by one person deciding alone.
ALSO GROWS
phōnē: Voice, sound
φωνή
It preserves the voice and sound element within the word for agreement.
symphōneō: To agree, be in accord
συμφωνέω
This related word makes the shared accord in the passage visible.
ἀκρασία
akrasia
GROWS FROM
κρατ (krat), κράτος (kratos)
Strength, power, mastery.
“lack of grip” in this verse is akrasia. The word names a lack of self-mastery. It identifies desire becoming difficult to govern as the risk during the pause, without placing that vulnerability on only one spouse.
ALSO GROWS
enkrateia: Self-control, mastery
ἐγκράτεια
It shares the κρατ root and expresses the mastery whose absence ἀκρασία names.
krateō: To hold, grasp, have power over
κρατέω
It shows the root’s sense of holding power, which is lacking in ἀκρασία.
THE PATTERN
Intimacy is mutual, and its rhythms include both closeness and restraint.
The wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.A time to hurl stones away, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to keep far from embracing.My beloved is mine, and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.THE THREAD
Again, I say to you, that if two of you sound together on the earth concerning anything they ask for, it will come to be for them from my Father who is in the heavens.The word translated “agree” shares the συμφων- family with “with consent” here, carrying the sense of voices in accord. That connection makes the pause a shared agreement between two people.
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