What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:20 Mean?

Do not treat prophesying as nothing.

1 Thessalonians 5:20 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Despise not prophesyings.

THE KEY

Despising prophecy is making it nothing before discernment has even begun.

THE MEANING

Prophetic speech is not disposable; it reaches you as an utterance with a claim worth discerning. The verse does not make every utterance unquestionable, the next line places testing beside openness.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The lie that prophetic speech has no claim worth weighing is undone here.

THE ROOT

ἐξουθενεῖτε

exoutheneite

GROWS FROM

οὐδέν

ouden

nothing; no thing

“treat as nothing” in this verse is exoutheneite. The verb carries the sense of treating something as nothing, so “despise” here is more than dislike: it is the act of stripping prophetic speech of any worth. The verse names that dismissal before the following line calls for discernment.

ALSO GROWS

oudeis: no one; nobody

οὐδείς

This related form turns “nothing” toward a person counted as nobody, echoing the way contempt reduces what it dismisses.

ouden: nothing; no thing

οὐδέν

This is the “nothing” at the heart of the verb: prophecy is not to be reduced to no thing.

προφητείας

prophēteias

GROWS FROM

φημί

phēmi

to say; to speak

“prophesying” in this verse is prophēteias. The word points to prophetic utterances, not only predictions about the future. What English can make sound like a category of religious activity is, at its root, speech, and this verse says that speech is not to be dismissed as nothing.

ALSO GROWS

prophētēs: prophet; one who speaks prophetically

προφήτης

The related word names the speaker, showing that the verse concerns both the utterance and the person who voices it.

prophēteuō: to prophesy; to speak prophetically

προφητεύω

This verb names the act of speaking that produces the “prophesyings” the verse says not to despise.

THE PATTERN

Prophetic claims are neither made weightless nor exempted from being tested.

When the prophet speaks in the nature of the LORD, if the word does not come to be, nor arrive, it is the word the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it in presumption. You shall not cower from him.

Deuteronomy 18:22 · SDVA claim to speak for the LORD is tested by whether the word comes to pass, so the speaker’s title alone does not settle its truth.

Let the prophets speak, two or three, and let the others judge it.

1 Corinthians 14:29 · SDVProphetic speech is heard while others weigh what is said; it is neither discarded nor placed beyond discernment.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they come out of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

1 John 4:1 · SDVThe verse calls for testing prophetic claims because false prophets also speak.

THE THREAD

Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 · SDV

The next verse supplies the companion to “Despise not”: “Prove all things” keeps discernment active, and “hold fast that which is good” preserves what withstands it. Together, the lines leave prophecy heard without making it unquestionable.

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