What Does 1 Timothy 6:9 Mean?
But those who want to be rich fall into testing and a snare, and into many mindless and harmful cravings, which sink people into ruin and the losing of the way.
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
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.THE KEY
The danger begins before the money is owned: desire fixed on becoming rich gathers force until it pulls a person under.
THE MEANING
When becoming rich is your aim, the wanting itself opens into temptation and entrapment. It multiplies into foolish, harmful desires, and those desires sink people into ruin and loss.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wealth is safe to pursue as long as you control what you do with it; the verse locates the danger in the desire that begins the chain.
THE ROOT
ἐπιθυμίας
epithymias
GROWS FROM
θυμ- (thym-), in θυμός (thymos)
The θυμ- base carries intense passion or heat; with ἐπί (epi, upon), it forms desire directed toward something.
The KJV’s “lusts” can sound narrowly sexual, but ἐπιθυμία (epithymia) can name desire more broadly. Here these heated, multiplied cravings take on the force of something that sinks a person.
ALSO GROWS
epithymeō: to desire, long for, or set one’s heart upon
ἐπιθυμέω
This related verb shows the desire as something directed toward an object, as in the wish to become rich.
thymos: passion, heat, or anger
θυμός
The shared θυμ- base gives the desires a sense of intensity, not a passing preference.
βυθίζουσιν
bythizousin
GROWS FROM
βυθ-
byth-
Depth; βυθίζω (bythizō) means to sink or plunge into the deep.
“sink” in this verse is bythizousin. The original verb makes submersion central to the image. The desires do not merely surround a person; they carry people beneath the surface into ruin.
ALSO GROWS
bythos: depth, the deep
βυθός
This related noun gives the verse’s “drown” its setting: a person is pulled down into depth.
bythizō: to sink or plunge into depth
βυθίζω
This is the verb used here, portraying the desires as the force that submerges people.
ἀπώλειαν
apōleian
GROWS FROM
ἀπόλλυμι
apollymi
To perish, be lost, or destroy; the word family also carries the sense of losing one’s way.
“the losing of the way” in this verse is apōleian. “Perdition” belongs to the word family of perishing and loss; the word holds ruin and losing one’s way together. The chain runs from heated desire, through submersion, toward loss.
ALSO GROWS
apollymi: to perish, be lost, or destroy
ἀπόλλυμι
This verb shares the family behind “perdition” and makes the endpoint a state of loss.
apōleia: loss, ruin, destruction
ἀπώλεια
This related noun names the loss toward which the verse says the desires sink people.
THE PATTERN
When riches become the heart’s aim, they redirect desire and cannot secure life.
Do not toil to grow rich; let go of your own discernment.And the cares of this age, and the deceit of riches, and the hungers for other things, going in, choke the word, and it becomes fruitless.And he said to them, Watch, and guard yourselves against grasping, for a person's life does not lie in the overflow of what they hold.THE THREAD
But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.James uses the same Greek word, ἐπιθυμία (epithymia), for the desire that draws and entices a person. Together, the verses trace desire as both the bait and the force that sinks.
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