What Does 1 Corinthians 8:10 Mean?
For if anyone sees you, the one who has knowledge, reclining at table in an idol's temple, will not his weak shared sight within him be built up to eat what is slaughtered for idols?
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 if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols;THE KEY
The Greek behind “emboldened” means “built up”: another person’s visible knowledge becomes a structure that can carry a weaker conscience into action.
THE MEANING
A person’s visible choice enters another person’s conscience: the one who sees you sitting there can be built toward eating, even while described as weak. What you know moves through the room as an example, shaping another person’s sense of what is possible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a choice remains private because it is permitted within one’s own understanding; another person’s conscience can take that visible choice as permission.
THE ROOT
οἰκοδομηθήσεται
oikodomēthēsetai
GROWS FROM
οἰκοδομέω
oikodomeō
To build a house; to build up or edify.
“be built up” in this verse is oikodomēthēsetai. The verb carries the image of a house being built up, adding a structural layer to “emboldened.” The observer’s conduct supplies a framework that moves the weaker conscience toward eating.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: House, home.
οἶκος
The house is the concrete image behind the building language used for the conscience’s movement toward action.
oikodomē: Building, edification.
οἰκοδομή
This related word makes the verse’s inward change feel like construction: something is being built in the person who sees.
συνείδησις
syneidēsis
GROWS FROM
σύν + οἶδα (syn + oida)
Knowing with; awareness accompanying a person.
“shared sight within him” in this verse is syneidēsis. The word joins syn, “with,” and oida, “know,” carrying a sense of knowing-with. Here, that inward awareness is shaped in the presence of another person’s visible conduct.
ALSO GROWS
oida: Know, perceive.
οἶδα
This is the knowing at the heart of the word for conscience.
synoida: Know with; be conscious of.
σύνοιδα
This related form echoes conscience as awareness held alongside oneself.
THE PATTERN
An act in shared life can become either an obstacle or a structure that steers another person’s next act.
You shall not curse the deaf, nor set a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall stand in awe of your God. I am the LORD.But whoever causes one of these little ones who lean their weight into me to stumble, it is better for him that a donkey's millstone be hung about his neck, and that he be sunk down into the deep of the sea.So then let us pursue the things that move toward wholeness, and the things that build one another up.THE THREAD
Now as touching the things slaughtered for idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.The Greek behind “edifieth” here and “be emboldened” in 8:10 belongs to the same house-building verb. In 8:10, another person’s visible conduct builds the weak conscience toward eating.
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