What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:1 Mean?
But concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need for me to write to 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
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.THE KEY
The verse holds duration and decisive occasion together, then reveals that a truth about both is already present before another explanation is written.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you within a shared kinship: time has its passing spans and its decisive moments, yet not every truth about them needs to be repeated in writing. What is already known can remain present without another explanation arriving.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Not every truth depends on being explained again before it can be known.
THE ROOT
καιρῶν
kairōn
GROWS FROM
καιρός
kairos
A fitting, decisive, or opportune occasion.
“seasons” in this verse is kairōn. καιρός names the moment as it comes due. Its branches show that an occasion can be timely or out of season, so the verse pairs not just how long time passes but when a moment is fitting.
ALSO GROWS
eukairos: Timely, opportune.
εὔκαιρος
It shows that a moment can carry the quality of being right for what meets it.
akairos: Untimely, out of season.
ἄκαιρος
Its contrast makes the timing’s quality visible: an occasion can arrive before or after its fitting moment.
χρόνων
chronōn
GROWS FROM
χρόνος
chronos
Time as duration, the span in which events unfold.
English gathers this under the general word “times,” but χρόνος names the span that passes. Its branch χρονίζω means to delay or take time, bringing the experience of duration into the verse alongside the decisive moments.
ALSO GROWS
chronizō: To delay, tarry, or take time.
χρονίζω
It reveals the waiting stretch that can unfold between one moment and another.
chronikos: Temporal, relating to time.
χρονικός
It carries χρόνος into the adjective for what belongs to time’s passing.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats time as both a measured span and a fitting occasion, recognizable without being reducible to a written timetable.
And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to part the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for appointed times, and for days and years."To everything there is an appointed time, and a time for every delight under the heavens.He said to them, "It is not yours to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has set in his own power."THE THREAD
He said to them, "It is not yours to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has set in his own power."The Greek repeats χρόνοι and καιροί, the same pair rendered “times” and “seasons” here. Acts places the timetable with the Father, opening this verse as assurance about what is already understood rather than a promise that every date can be possessed.
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