What Does 1 Peter 2:1 Mean?
Therefore, putting off all badness, all bait, all playacting, all envy, and all speaking against,
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
Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,THE KEY
The verse pictures malice, deceit, envy, and slander as things you can put down, not as the fixed shape of who you are.
THE MEANING
The verse names malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speech as things being laid aside now. Its central verb pictures them as things set down and released. The next verse turns from this clearing to a hunger for unadulterated milk.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that these ways of relating are permanent features of the self: the verse pictures them as things that can be put aside.
THE ROOT
ἀποθέμενοι
apotithemenoi
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
To put, place, or set; the prefix ἀπό (apo) gives the action its direction: away.
“putting off” in this verse is apotithemenoi. The Greek form joins “away” to “put”: the harms named here are pictured as a bundle being set down. The same base can describe putting something away or laying something upon, so the direction of the action matters: here, these harms are released from their place in the reader’s life.
ALSO GROWS
apotithēmi: To put something away or cast it off.
ἀποτίθημι
This is the verb behind “laying aside” here; its use for casting off works of darkness in Romans 13:12 makes the image of removal especially clear.
epitithēmi: To place or lay something upon.
ἐπιτίθημι
This compound shares the root of putting and placing, while its prefix points the action toward something being laid on; in this verse, the direction is away.
THE PATTERN
A life-giving movement begins by putting away what corrupts relationship and action.
Bathe, and become clear. Remove the harm of your deeds from before my eyes. Let go of doing harm.Therefore, taking off all dirt and the overflow of wickedness, in gentleness take in the planted word, which is able to deliver your living souls.Therefore, since we also have so great a cloud of witnesses lying around us, setting down every weight and falling short that so easily wraps around us, let us run the race lying before us, remaining under it.THE THREAD
Therefore, since we also have so great a cloud of witnesses lying around us, setting down every weight and falling short that so easily wraps around us, let us run the race lying before us, remaining under it.Both verses use ἀποτίθημι (apotithēmi, “lay aside; put away”). Here a bundle of harms is put down; in Hebrews, weights and sin are laid aside so the race can continue.
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