What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Mean?
Therefore, comfort one another and build one another up, just as you are already doing.
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 comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.THE KEY
The comfort you receive from others is part of how you are built, and the comfort you give is part of how they are built.
THE MEANING
You are part of a shared life where comfort moves between people and strengthens each of you. You receive support, give support, and this mutual building is already at work among you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that needing comfort makes you a burden, or that strength flows in only one direction: here each person receives and gives it.
THE ROOT
παρακαλεῖτε
parakaleite
GROWS FROM
παρακαλέω (pará + kaléō)
Console, encourage, or urge; an appeal that can steady someone and call them forward.
The word’s family holds consolation and appeal together: comfort can soothe, but it can also strengthen someone to keep going. Here that support is mutual, moving between you and the people around you.
ALSO GROWS
paraklēsis: comfort, encouragement, appeal
παράκλησις
This related noun holds consolation and urging within the same word family.
paraklētos: comforter, advocate
παράκλητος
This related word shows the same family extending comfort into advocacy and support.
οἰκοδομεῖτε
oikodomeite
GROWS FROM
οἰκοδομέω (oîkos + doméō)
Build a house; figuratively, build up or strengthen.
“build up” in this verse is oikodomeite. The English “edify” can sound like an abstract improvement, while the Greek word carries the shape of house-building. Each person helps strengthen the shared life the others inhabit.
ALSO GROWS
oikodomē: building, edification
οἰκοδομή
The related noun names the building work itself, showing that strengthening one another forms something shared.
oikodomos: builder
οἰκοδόμος
This related word makes visible the people doing the work of building.
THE PATTERN
People become stronger through mutual acts that sharpen, comfort, and build one another.
Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the face of his friend.So then let us pursue the things that move toward wholeness, and the things that build one another up.What then is it, brothers? When you gather together, each of you has a song, has a teaching, has an unveiling, has a tongue, has a carrying across. Let all things become for the building up.THE THREAD
So then let us pursue the things that move toward wholeness, and the things that build one another up.The word translated “edify” comes from the same Greek word family as the house-building verb here. Romans ties that shared building to peace, showing how mutual strengthening takes shape among you.
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