What Does 2 Corinthians 11:29 Mean?
Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is snared, and I do not burn?
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
Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?THE KEY
The verse makes another person’s weakness your own and their stumble a fire you feel within.
THE MEANING
When another is weak, the distance between their condition and your own narrows: their weakness becomes something felt within you. When they are tripped into harm, you burn with it; their stumbling is no longer emotionally remote. The verse names this inward participation without reducing the fire to a single emotion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s stumble can remain a private matter, untouched by the one who sees it.
THE ROOT
ἀσθενεῖ
asthenei
GROWS FROM
ἀσθεν-
asthen-
Weakness; lacking strength.
Both “is weak” and “I am weak” use forms of the same Greek verb. Another’s weakness meets the speaker’s own weakness, making the connection participation rather than observation from a safe distance.
ALSO GROWS
asthenēs: Weak, feeble.
ἀσθενής
The adjective belongs to the same word family and describes the person whose weakness the verse takes inwardly.
astheneia: Weakness, infirmity.
ἀσθένεια
This noun makes weakness a lived condition, not merely a label placed on someone else.
σκανδαλίζεται
skandalizetai
GROWS FROM
σκανδαλ-
skandal-
A snare or trap-trigger; something that trips a person.
“snared” in this verse is skandalizetai. The verb can describe someone being tripped or caught by a snare, reaching beyond the English sense of hurt feelings. The verse turns toward the moment another person loses footing, and the fire that follows in the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
skandalon: A snare, stumbling block, or cause of stumbling.
σκάνδαλον
The noun reveals the caught foot beneath “offended”: someone is thrown off their way.
skandalismos: Stumbling or an occasion of stumbling.
σκανδαλισμός
This related noun names the event whose effect the speaker feels as burning.
πυροῦμαι
pyroumai
GROWS FROM
πῦρ
pyr
Fire; burning heat.
“burn” in this verse is pyroumai. The final verb keeps the fire inside the sentence: when someone is tripped, the speaker himself burns. The verse leaves open whether that heat is grief, indignation, or anguish, preserving its force without narrowing it to one emotion.
ALSO GROWS
pyr: Fire.
πῦρ
The root makes “I burn” concrete as an inward heat stirred by another’s stumbling.
pyrosis: A burning or fiery ordeal.
πύρωσις
This related word carries the same image of burning intensity, showing how much force the verb holds.
THE PATTERN
Shared life carries another’s weakness into the self and makes another’s fall burn within.
In all their narrow place he was narrowed, and the messenger of his face brought them out. In his love and in his pity he bought them back. He lifted them and carried them all the days of the ages.If one limb aches, all the limbs ache with it, and if one is clothed in weight, all of them rejoice with it.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.THE THREAD
Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in outrages, in bindings, in being pursued, and in narrow places, for the sake of the Anointed One. For when I am weak, then I am strong.“Weak” comes from the same Greek verb family here and in 11:29: the weakness named in another is also the speaker’s own lived condition. This verse opens that shared weakness further by showing it as the place where strength appears.
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