What Does 1 Peter 5:13 Mean?
The assembly in Babylon, chosen together with you, embraces you, and so does Mark, my son.
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
The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.THE KEY
The assembly and the reader are named as chosen together, making belonging a shared bond that crosses distance.
THE MEANING
You are greeted by an assembly that shares its choosing with you, and Marcus is named as a son. Belonging reaches across distance: you are included in a shared choosing and a family bond. The greeting makes that connection present and personal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being chosen is a private status that leaves you alone; this verse describes a shared choosing and a greeting between people.
THE ROOT
συνεκλεκτή
syneklektē
GROWS FROM
ἐκλέγω
To choose or select.
The Greek form συνεκλεκτή (syneklektē) means co-chosen, chosen together; it describes the assembly as sharing this choosing with you. The word makes belonging collective: the assembly’s distance does not erase its connection to you.
ALSO GROWS
eklektos: Chosen or selected.
ἐκλεκτός
The same word family calls a people chosen in 1 Peter 2:9, showing the shared choosing as a collective identity.
eklogē: Choice or election.
ἐκλογή
This branch names the act or result of choosing, keeping the focus on a shared choice rather than a private label.
THE PATTERN
Shared choosing gathers people into a belonging that is expressed through mutual connection.
For you are a set-apart people unto the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people of his own treasure, above all the peoples who are upon the face of the ground.For as the body is one, and has many limbs, and all the limbs of the body, though many, are one body, so also is the Anointed One.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.The word translated “chosen” is ἐκλεκτός (eklektos), meaning selected, from the same Greek word family as συνεκλεκτή (syneklektē), meaning co-chosen. Together, the verses present choosing as a shared identity that forms a people.
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