What Does 2 Corinthians 1:14 Mean?
As you also have come to know us in part, that we are your boast, even as you are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.
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
As also ye have acknowledged us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.THE KEY
The “rejoicing” here is a ground for exultation, so the verse makes you one another’s reason to rejoice in the day of the Lord Jesus.
THE MEANING
Your recognition of one another is partial now, yet it already holds a shared joy: you are a ground of exultation for another person, and they are one for you. The day of the Lord Jesus is the horizon where this mutual recognition comes fully into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the idea that joy before the Lord is solitary: another person can be your reason for exultation, and you can be theirs.
THE ROOT
καύχημα
kauchema
GROWS FROM
καυχ-
kaukh-
boasting, exultation; that in which one boasts
“boast” in this verse is kauchema. The same Greek word-family names both the act of boasting and what someone boasts in. Here, “rejoicing” is more than a feeling: you yourself can be another person’s ground for exultation.
ALSO GROWS
kauchaomai: To boast or exult.
καυχάομαι
It names the act that gives “rejoicing” its sense of open exultation.
kauchesis: Boasting or the ground for exultation.
καύχησις
The same word-family appears as “rejoicing” in 2 Corinthians 1:12, linking a life lived sincerely with the people who become one another’s joy.
ἐπέγνωτε
epegnōkate
GROWS FROM
γινωσκ-
ginōsk-
to know, recognize, perceive
“come to know” in this verse is epegnōkate. This is a form of ἐπιγινώσκω (epiginōskō), built on γινώσκω (ginōskō): knowing that includes recognizing someone. “In part” makes that recognition real yet incomplete, while the verse places it against the horizon of the Lord Jesus’ day.
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: Knowledge or knowing.
γνῶσις
It belongs to the same word-family and shows that the verse’s recognition is rooted in knowing.
epignōsis: Recognition or acknowledgment.
ἐπίγνωσις
This related form echoes the verse’s emphasis on coming to recognize one another.
THE PATTERN
In relationship with God and one another, a person can become the very ground of another’s joy.
For what is our hope or joy, or the crown of our boasting? Is it not even you before the face of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, at his arrival?So then, my brothers, beloved and longed for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord, beloved.For as a young man takes a virgin as his own, so shall your sons take you as their own; and as the bridegroom leaps for the bride, so shall your God leap for you.THE THREAD
For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in singleness and the sunlit clarity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the favor of God, we have walked in the world, and all the more overflowing toward you.“Rejoicing” in 1:14 is καύχημα (kauchema, a ground for boasting or exultation), from the same Greek word-family as καύχησις (kauchesis, boasting or rejoicing) in 1:12. There, sincerity is named as the ground of rejoicing; here, that joy extends to the people who become one another’s reason to exult.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us