What Does 1 Timothy 5:23 Mean?
No longer drink water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent weakness.
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
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.THE KEY
“Infirmities” comes from a word for lacking strength, and the verse meets that weakness with a small, concrete provision.
THE MEANING
The verse meets the reader’s recurring bodily weakness with a concrete, modest provision: a little wine for the stomach. Bodily need is spoken of plainly, as part of life, without assigning it a moral verdict.
THE ROOT
ἀσθενείαις
astheneiais
GROWS FROM
ἀσθεν- (a- + σθένος, sthenos)
Lacking strength; weakness.
The word translated “infirmities” grows from the idea of being without strength. Paired with “often,” it names weakness that recurs, while the verse responds to it as a bodily condition with practical care.
ALSO GROWS
astheneō: To be weak or ill.
ἀσθενέω
The same word family can name weakness as something a person experiences, keeping the verse’s concern close to lived bodily condition.
asthenēs: Weak; without strength.
ἀσθενής
This related adjective makes the root’s image plain: the infirmity is a lack of strength, not a judgment about character.
THE PATTERN
Bodily need is met through concrete provisions and acts of care.
And he looked, and behold, a round cake baked on the hot stones, and a jug of waters at his head. And he ate and drank, and turned back and lay down.And Isaiah said, Take a cake of pressed figs. And they took it and set it on the boil, and he lived.And he came near to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and lifted him onto his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and tended him.THE THREAD
And he said to me, "My favor is enough for you, for strength is carried to its end in weakness." Most gladly, then, I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the strength of the Anointed One may pitch its tent over me.“Infirmities” translates the same Greek noun, ἀσθενείαις (astheneiais), in both verses. Here it names recurring bodily trouble; the shared word lets that concrete weakness remain part of the larger language of human weakness.
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