What Does 1 Timothy 6:20 Mean?
O Timothy, guard what has been placed beside you, turning away from the trampled and empty sounds, and the oppositions of falsely named knowing.
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
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:THE KEY
The verse makes the name itself suspect: a claim can wear the title “knowledge” while the deposit remains something to guard.
THE MEANING
What is entrusted to you is a charge to keep, not a disposable idea. Empty talk and claims bearing knowledge’s name do not become true by their label. The verse speaks now: what has been placed in your care and what is being presented as true are not automatically the same thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a confident label proves a claim is true, or that what is entrusted will preserve itself.
THE ROOT
φυλάξον
phylaxon
GROWS FROM
φυλακ-
phylak-
To guard, keep watch, or protect.
“guard” in this verse is phylaxon. This is active custody: what is entrusted is watched over, not merely retained in memory. The same guarding verb appears beside the same deposit word in 2 Timothy 1:14, making the charge concrete.
ALSO GROWS
phylax: A watchman or guardian.
φύλαξ
The verb’s sense of keeping watch points to care that stays alert.
phylakē: A watch or guarded place; also a prison.
φυλακή
The same word family holds both watching and custody, sharpening the image of something kept under guard.
παραθήκην
parathēkēn
GROWS FROM
θηκ- (thēk-, a thing placed; from τίθημι, tithēmi, put or place)
A deposit entrusted, something set beside for safekeeping.
“placed beside you” in this verse is parathēkēn. The entrusted thing is pictured as something placed in your care. That makes “keep” a charge of custody: the deposit is given to be guarded, not treated as your invention or as something disposable.
ALSO GROWS
paratithēmi: To place something before another or entrust it to them.
παρατίθημι
The deposit’s image comes from something deliberately placed into another’s care.
tithēmi: To put or set something in position.
τίθημι
Beneath the idea of a deposit is the simple act of placing something where it can be kept.
γνώσεως
gnōseōs
GROWS FROM
γνω-
gnō-
Knowing or knowledge.
The KJV’s “science” here is knowledge broadly. The surrounding phrase calls some knowledge ψευδώνυμος (pseudōnymos, falsely named): the point is the difference between knowing and a claim that has borrowed knowledge’s name.
ALSO GROWS
ginōskō: To know or perceive, including through encounter.
γινώσκω
This branch brings knowing into lived perception rather than reducing it to a label or claim.
gnōstos: Known or recognizable.
γνωστός
It echoes the distinction between what is truly known and what is merely presented under the name of knowledge.
THE PATTERN
Discernment guards what is entrusted by holding what is good without accepting every claim as true.
Guard the good thing placed beside you, through the Set-Apart Breath which makes its home in us.Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.THE THREAD
Guard the good thing placed beside you, through the Set-Apart Breath which makes its home in us.The Greek wording repeats both the deposit noun, παραθήκη (parathēkē, a deposit entrusted), and the guarding verb, φυλάσσω (phylassō, to guard). Together they picture what is in your care as a deposit watched over through the Set-Apart Breath dwelling within you.
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