What Does 1 Peter 2:2 Mean?
As newborn infants, long for the unmixed milk of the word, so that by it you may grow into deliverance.
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
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:THE KEY
The nourishment that grows you is described as guileless: its purity is marked by the absence of deceit.
THE MEANING
You are pictured as a newborn whose hunger turns toward unadulterated nourishment. The word’s milk is free of guile, and through receiving it you grow. Dependence here is not the opposite of maturity; it is where growth begins.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that needing nourishment proves you are immature. Here, hunger and dependence are the very posture from which growth comes.
THE ROOT
ἄδολον
adolon
GROWS FROM
δόλος (dolos), the base noun within ἄδολος (adolos)
Bait, guile, or deceit; ἄδολος means free from guile, unadulterated.
“unmixed” in this verse is adolon. The preceding verse names guile as something laid aside; this verse describes the milk as free from that same guile. The passage links what is removed with what can nourish: deceit falls away, and guileless milk is received.
ALSO GROWS
dolos: Guile, deceit; also a snare or bait
δόλος
The preceding verse names “guile” as something laid aside, while ἄδολος describes milk without it.
doloō: To deceive or handle deceitfully
δολόω
This verb carries the same root into the act of deception, clarifying what the milk in this verse is free from.
αὐξηθῆτε
auxēthēte
GROWS FROM
αὐξ- (aux-), the Greek growth stem of αὐξάνω (auxanō)
To grow or increase.
“grow” in this verse is auxēthēte. The growth verb ties milk directly to increase: what is received becomes the means of growth. The same Greek stem appears in 2 Peter 3:18, where growth continues in favor and knowledge.
ALSO GROWS
auxanō: To grow or increase
αὐξάνω
This is the verb’s base form and carries the same idea of increase found in “grow thereby.”
auxēsis: Growth or increase
αὔξησις
This noun uses the same stem for increase, as in the growth nourished by God in Colossians 2:19.
THE PATTERN
Life increases through nourishment received; growth is the fruit of what reaches and feeds it.
For as the rain comes down, and the snow from the heavens, and does not return there, but drenches the earth, and makes it bear and sprout, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.I planted, Apollos gave to drink, but God made it grow.THE THREAD
But grow in favor, and in the knowing of our Lord and deliverer, Jesus the Anointed One. To him be the weight both now and unto the day of the age. Amen.The same Greek verb, αὐξάνω (auxanō), governs “grow” here and in 1 Peter 2:2. There, nourishment is the means of growth; here, growth continues in favor and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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