What Does 1 Corinthians 9:13 Mean?
Do you not know that those who serve the set-apart things eat from the temple, and those who sit beside the altar share with the altar?
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
Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?THE KEY
Those who serve at the altar share in the altar’s own provision.
THE MEANING
Sacred service and material provision belong to the same living arrangement: those who work among sacred things eat from the temple’s provision, and those who attend the altar share its portion. Receiving that provision is part of participating in the work itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that receiving material support makes sacred service less spiritual.
THE ROOT
συμμερίζονται
symmerizontai
GROWS FROM
μερίζω (merízō), from μέρος (meros)
To divide into portions, allot, or share.
“partakers” in this verse is symmerizontai. The Greek form joins σύν (syn, “with”) to μερίζω (merízō, “to apportion or share”), describing the attendants as sharing in the altar’s portion. The word holds participation and provision together: they do not merely wait near the altar; they share what belongs to it.
ALSO GROWS
meros: Part, portion, or share.
μέρος
The altar’s attendants receive a share from the sacred service they attend.
merízō: To divide, allot, distribute, or share.
μερίζω
The root makes the allocation of provision part of the meaning of participation.
merismós: A division, distribution, or allocation.
μερισμός
This branch echoes the portioning that makes the altar’s provision shareable.
THE PATTERN
Those who tend a source share in its fruit.
The priests, the Levites, all the tribe of Levi, have no portion nor inheritance with Israel; they eat the LORD's offerings of fire, and his inheritance.Whoever keeps the fig tree eats its fruit, and whoever keeps his master is weighted.For the writing says, "You shall not muzzle the ox while he treads out the grain," and, "The worker is weighed worthy of his wage."THE THREAD
Look at Israel according to the flesh. Are not those who eat the slain offerings sharers in common of the altar?This verse makes the altar-sharing logic in 1 Corinthians 9:13 explicit: eating from the sacrifices is participation with the altar. It calls those participants κοινωνοί (koinōnoi, “sharers”), pairing common participation with the earlier verse’s language of sharing a portion.
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