What Does 1 John 3:13 Mean?
Do not marvel, brothers, if the world hates you.
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
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.THE KEY
The verse names you as part of a shared family before it names the world’s rejection, so hatred does not define who you are.
THE MEANING
You do not need to be astonished if the world hates you. Your belonging is named as shared kinship, and the world’s hostility does not erase that bond. Hatred is real here, but it is not a measure of your worth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being hated by the surrounding world means I must be unworthy or mistaken.
THE ROOT
ἀδελφοί
adelphoi
GROWS FROM
δελφ (delph), from δελφύς (delphys)
womb; shared birth
“brothers” in this verse is adelphoi. The word for brethren carries the image of people born from the same womb. The verse places the reader within shared kinship, not alone before the world’s hostility.
ALSO GROWS
adelphos: brother
ἀδελφός
The singular form keeps the shared-family sense inside the address to each person.
adelphotēs: brotherhood
ἀδελφότης
This related word names a community held together as kin, reinforcing that the verse speaks to belonging as well as rejection.
κόσμος
kosmos
GROWS FROM
κοσμ
kosm
order, arrangement, adornment
Kosmos can mean the world and its ordered arrangement. The verse’s “world” is more than a place: it can name the surrounding order whose hostility meets the kinship named in “brethren.”
ALSO GROWS
kosmeō: to arrange, put in order, adorn
κοσμέω
This verb carries the sense of arranging that also lies behind kosmos.
kosmos: order, adornment; world
κόσμος
The same word holds both the sense of an ordered arrangement and the world within which the reader experiences hostility.
THE PATTERN
Hostility from the surrounding order can accompany allegiance to God’s life, so opposition alone does not define the one it targets.
Those who hate me without cause outnumber the hairs of my head. Those who would cut me off, my enemies falsely, are mighty. Then I make whole what I did not tear away.If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.And all who wish to live in reverence, in Jesus the Anointed One, will be pursued.THE THREAD
See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and we are. Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him.The same Greek word, kosmos, appears as “world” in both verses. This verse connects the world’s hostility with its failure to recognize the children of God, so its rejection does not define their belonging.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us