What Does 1 Timothy 6:21 Mean?
Which some professing have missed the mark concerning trust. Favor be with you. Amen.
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
Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.THE KEY
A claim that sounds like knowledge can itself steer the reader away from trust, because here error is pictured as a missed target.
THE MEANING
A claim can sound like knowledge and still draw you away from the trust it claims to serve. The verse names that movement as a missed aim, not a deeper grasp. Its closing wish places favor with you now, and Amen seals it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that confident profession proves a person is still aimed at trust dissolves here: a claim can sound certain and still miss its mark.
THE ROOT
ἠστόχησαν
ēstóchēsan
GROWS FROM
στοχ-
Aim, mark, or target; the verb describes missing the target.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ēstóchēsan. The verb pictures a claim missing its aim, not merely holding a different opinion. The verse places that miss beside trust: the question is whether claimed insight keeps a person oriented toward what they lean on.
ALSO GROWS
stóchos: Target, mark.
στόχος
The noun makes the image in “have erred” concrete: an aim can miss what it is directed toward.
stocházomai: Aim at; infer or consider.
στοχάζομαι
This branch carries the sense of directing thought toward a target, so the error is a loss of direction as well as accuracy.
ἐπαγγελλόμενοι
epangellómenoi
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
Announce or report.
Professing carries the feel of a claim sent out as an announcement; the miss is entangled with what is being asserted. The verse sets that voiced claim beside the steadiness of trust.
ALSO GROWS
ángelos: Messenger.
ἄγγελος
A messenger carries an announcement onward, echoing how a profession gives a claim a voice and direction.
epangelía: Promise, declaration.
ἐπαγγελία
This related word shows the family’s link to a claim put forward, whether as a declaration or a promise.
πίστιν
pístin
GROWS FROM
πειθ-
Persuade, bring to trust.
The word translated “faith” belongs to the same family as being persuaded and trusting. Here trust is what a claim can lose its bearing from: not merely a label of belief, but what a person leans their full weight on.
ALSO GROWS
peíthō: Persuade; trust, rely on.
πείθω
This verb connects trust with being persuaded, clarifying what can be displaced by a competing claim.
pistós: Firm, steady, trustworthy.
πιστός
This branch gives trust the quality of steadiness that a profession alone cannot guarantee.
THE PATTERN
When asserted insight becomes detached from trust, it can lead a person onto a way that only seems right.
And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die.There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.Claiming themselves to be wise, they were made fools.THE THREAD
Who have missed the mark concerning the truth, saying that the rising has already come, and overturn the trust of some.This verse uses ἀστοχέω (astocheō, “to miss the mark”), the same verb translated “have erred” in 2 Timothy 2:18. There, a claim about resurrection misses its target and unsettles others’ trust; the shared word pictures error as an aim gone astray.
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