What Does 2 Corinthians 6:5 Mean?
In blows, in prisons, in upheavals, in toil, in sleeplessness, in going without food.
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
In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings;THE KEY
The word translated “imprisonments” also names a watch or guarded custody, so confinement carries the image of being held under watch.
THE MEANING
When this verse meets you now, it gives bodily strain its separate names: blows, confinement, upheaval, toil, sleeplessness, and hunger. It keeps those costs distinct instead of flattening them into one abstraction.
THE ROOT
φυλακαῖς
phylakais
GROWS FROM
φυλακ-
phylak-
guarding, custody, keeping watch
“prisons” in this verse is phylakais. The word belongs to a Greek word-family that includes guarding and keeping watch. Confinement is pictured as custody under watch, a held condition as well as a place.
ALSO GROWS
phylassō: guard, keep watch
φυλάσσω
This verb shows the guarding action carried by the word-family behind “imprisonments.”
phylax: guard, sentinel
φύλαξ
The guard and the guarded place belong to the same word-family, linking confinement with watchful custody.
ἀγρυπνίαις
agrypniais
GROWS FROM
ἀγρυπν-
agrypn-
wakefulness, sleeplessness
The word holds sleeplessness alongside watchfulness, making the verse’s “watchings” bodily time without rest. Wakefulness stands beside blows, confinement, toil, and hunger as another cost the verse names.
ALSO GROWS
agrypneō: stay awake, keep watch
ἀγρυπνέω
The verb names the waking action behind the noun used for “watchings.”
agrypnos: sleepless, wakeful
ἄγρυπνος
This related adjective makes the lost sleep within “watchings” visible.
THE PATTERN
The cost of a pressured life appears in distinct bodily exposures: violence, confinement, lost rest, and deprivation.
At night my bones are pierced within me, and my sinews do not lie down.Others took the trial of mockings and the lash, and still more of bonds and the guardhouse.My heart is struck and dries like grass, for I forget to eat my bread.THE THREAD
And when they had laid many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, charging the keeper of the bonds to keep them securely.The Greek words translated “stripes” and “prison” recur in both verses, turning this list into a scene of blows followed by custody. Acts makes the pairing visible: bodily injury and guarded confinement arrive together.
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