What Does 2 Corinthians 6:11 Mean?
O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.
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
O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged.THE KEY
The mouth opens toward you, but the heart is made spacious enough to hold you.
THE MEANING
Your welcome is more than words reaching you: it is room made within for you. The heart is pictured as widened, so relationship becomes space that can receive another person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that being heard is the same as being received dissolves: speech can open outward while the heart remains narrow.
THE ROOT
πεπλάτυνται
peplatyntai
GROWS FROM
πλατύνω
platynō
To make broad, widen, or make spacious.
“widened” in this verse is peplatyntai. The form πεπλάτυνται (peplatyntai, “has been made wide”) keeps a spatial image: the heart has room within it. The same verb can describe making something outwardly broad; here, that breadth belongs to the heart opening toward another person.
ALSO GROWS
platys: Broad, wide.
πλατύς
This adjective carries the spatial sense behind the widening: the heart is broad in capacity, not elevated in status.
plateia: A broad street or open square.
πλατεῖα
This related word names literal public space, showing how the same word family makes “enlarged heart” an image of room.
THE PATTERN
A true opening widens inner capacity for what can be received.
I run the way of your commands, when you widen my heart.Then he threw open their minds, so that they might put the writings together.Now, as a return in kind, I speak as to my children. Be you also widened.THE THREAD
But they do all their works to be seen by people, for they widen their guards and enlarge the fringes of their garments.The same Greek verb behind “enlarged” here appears as “make broad” for phylacteries widened to attract attention. Matthew gives that widening an outward, performative use; here, the breadth is in the heart, opening toward another person.
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