What Does 1 Peter 1:20 Mean?
Who indeed was known beforehand before the foundation of the world, but was made visible in these last times for 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
Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,THE KEY
The one made visible for you now is known before the world’s foundation.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you in the present: the one made visible for you is known before the world’s foundation. What comes into view now carries a beginning older than the world’s visible order.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What is revealed for you now is not a late improvisation; the verse places its knowing before the world’s foundation.
THE ROOT
προεγνωσμένου
proegnōsmenou
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω (ginōskō), with πρό (pro-, before)
To know or recognize; with pro-, to know beforehand.
“known beforehand” in this verse is proegnōsmenou. The word carries knowing at its center: what is made visible for you is already held in view before the world’s foundation. Beside “was manifest,” it joins prior knowing with present unveiling.
ALSO GROWS
prognōsis: Knowing beforehand.
πρόγνωσις
It carries the same knowing into the verse’s before-the-world horizon.
gnōsis: Knowing or knowledge.
γνῶσις
It keeps the root’s emphasis on knowing visible beneath the idea of what is foreordained.
ἐφανερώθη
ephanerōthē
GROWS FROM
φανερόω
phaneroō
To make visible or bring into view.
“made visible” in this verse is ephanerōthē. The verse describes a disclosure: what was known beforehand becomes visible for you. “Manifest” holds the movement from what is unseen into what can be seen.
ALSO GROWS
phaneros: Open to sight or plainly seen.
φανερός
It shares the idea of what has come into view.
epiphaneia: An appearance or manifestation.
ἐπιφάνεια
It extends the same family’s language of visibility and disclosure.
THE PATTERN
What is held before its appearing comes into view in time.
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient days the things not yet made, saying, My counsel will stand, and all that I delight in I will make.The mystery that has been hidden away from the ages and from the generations, but now has been made visible to his set-apart ones.For there is nothing hidden that will not be brought to light, nor has anything become hidden away, but that it come into the open.THE THREAD
For whom he knew beforehand, he also marked out beforehand to be shaped together into the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.“Foreknow” here shares the Greek root προγινώσκω (proginōskō), “know beforehand,” with “foreordained” in 1 Peter 1:20. In Romans the knowing concerns people; here it concerns the one made visible for you.
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