What Does 2 Corinthians 1:3 Mean?
Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Father of compassions and the God of all comfort.
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
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;THE KEY
The word translated “comfort” grows from the Greek family of calling and urging, revealing comfort as encouragement that reaches and steadies you.
THE MEANING
God is the source of compassion and every form of encouragement available to you now. The verse places tender regard and sustaining comfort together as part of God’s nature toward you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that compassion is scarce or that God is absent where comfort is needed.
THE ROOT
παράκλησις
paraklēsis
GROWS FROM
καλέω
καλέω (kaleō) means “to call” or “summon”; παράκλησις belongs to this family of calling and appeal, with a related vowel shift in κλῆσις.
English “comfort” can sound like a feeling, but παράκλησις (paraklēsis) belongs to the family of calling, urging, and encouragement. Here, comfort reaches you as encouragement that steadies.
ALSO GROWS
parakaleō: to encourage, appeal, or urge
παρακαλέω
This verb in the same family turns a call into encouragement or appeal, showing the active sense carried by the verse’s comfort.
klēsis: calling or invitation
κλῆσις
This related form preserves the sense of a call or invitation within the word family behind comfort.
πατήρ
patēr
GROWS FROM
πατρ
πατήρ (patēr) means “father”; the consonantal family πατρ carries the relation of parenthood and lineage.
“Father of mercies” presents compassion as coming from a source, not as an occasional act. The Greek family also names family and lineage, giving the phrase a sense of compassion belonging to God’s parental character.
ALSO GROWS
patria: family, lineage, or clan
πατριά
This word from the πατρ family names the people connected by family line, illuminating the relational sense of “Father.”
patrōios: paternal or ancestral
πατρῷος
This related adjective carries the family’s sense of what belongs to a father or a lineage.
οἰκτιρμῶν
oiktirmōn
GROWS FROM
οἰκτίρω
οἰκτίρω (oiktirō) means “to pity” or “show compassion”; its word family names compassion and mercy.
“compassions” in this verse is oiktirmōn. The Greek noun is plural here, joining God’s fatherhood to the many expressions of compassion. The verse places those mercies beside “all comfort,” tracing both to God.
ALSO GROWS
oiktirmos: compassion or pity
οἰκτιρμός
This noun from the same family names the compassion gathered in the verse’s “mercies.”
oiktirmōn: compassionate or merciful
οἰκτίρμων
This related form describes one who shows the pity and compassion named by the root.
THE PATTERN
God’s comfort meets inward distress through consolation that steadies and renews hope.
In the multitude of my thoughts within me, your comforts caress my living soul.I, even I, am the one who comforts you. Who are you, that you fear a frail one who will die, and a son of man who is set down as grass?For whatever was written before was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through the comfort of the writings we might hold hope.THE THREAD
For whatever was written before was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through the comfort of the writings we might hold hope.The same Greek noun παράκλησις (paraklēsis), meaning “comfort” or “encouragement,” appears in both verses. Here, God is the source of all comfort; in Romans, that comfort reaches you through scripture and sustains hope.
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