What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:26 Mean?
Embrace all the brothers with a set-apart kiss.
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
Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss.THE KEY
The kiss makes set-apart belonging touchable, and “all” extends that welcome across the whole community.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you as part of a community where welcome takes bodily form: affection passes through a greeting shared with every sibling. “Holy” gives that touch the character of something set apart for this belonging.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred belonging must stay abstract or emotionally distant.
THE ROOT
φιλήματι
philēmati
GROWS FROM
φιλέω
phileō
To love or show affection.
The noun for “kiss” carries the root of love and affection. The verse makes that affection visible in a greeting shared with the whole community.
ALSO GROWS
phileō: To love or show affection.
φιλέω
The root beneath “kiss” keeps the greeting connected to love.
kataphileō: To kiss warmly or fervently.
καταφιλέω
This related verb shows the same affection-root expressed through a kiss.
philadelphia: Brotherly or sibling love.
φιλαδελφία
It brings affection and sibling belonging together, as this greeting does.
ἁγίῳ
hagiō
GROWS FROM
ἅγιος
hagios
Set apart; sacred.
“set-apart” in this verse is hagiō. “Holy” marks the greeting as set apart for shared belonging. Here, sacredness is carried through a gesture of affection between people.
ALSO GROWS
hagiazō: To set apart or make sacred.
ἁγιάζω
This verb shows the action associated with what is called holy.
hagiasmos: Setting apart; sanctification.
ἁγιασμός
It names the state or process of being set apart, the quality given to this greeting.
THE PATTERN
Belonging becomes visible through a shared, embodied greeting.
And when Laban heard the report of Jacob, his sister's son, he ran to meet him, and clasped him, and kissed him, and brought him into his house. And Jacob recounted to Laban all these words.Embrace one another with a set-apart kiss. The assemblies of the anointed one embrace you.Embrace one another with a kiss of love. Wholeness be with all of you who are in the Anointed One. Amen.THE THREAD
You gave me no kiss, but this woman, since I came in, has not left off kissing my feet.Luke’s καταφιλέω (kataphileō, to kiss warmly) carries the same φιλέω (phileō, to love or show affection) root as the φίλημα (philēma, kiss) here. There, the missing kiss marks welcome withheld; here, the greeting extends across the whole sibling community.
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