What Does 2 Corinthians 7:13 Mean?
For this reason we have been comforted in your comfort; and we overflowed all the more with joy for the joy of Titus, because his breath has been given rest by all of you.
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
Therefore we were comforted in your comfort: yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we for the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all.THE KEY
Your care travels farther than its first recipient: it gives rest to Titus’s breath, and his joy becomes Paul’s.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to how your care can travel: comfort you offer reaches another person as rest, and that person’s joy can enlarge someone else’s. One act of shared care becomes joy across a community.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The comfort you give has no effect beyond the person in front of you.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνευ- (pneu-), from πνέω (pneō)
To blow or breathe.
English “spirit” can sound separate from the body, but πνεῦμα (pneuma) also means breath or wind. Titus’s πνεῦμα is what you all refresh: the word for his inner life still carries the sense of breath.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: To blow or breathe.
πνέω
The verb behind the noun keeps its concrete breath and wind sense close.
pnoē: Breath or wind.
πνοή
This related noun shows how closely the word-family joins breath with the unseen movement of wind.
ἀναπέπαυται
anapepautai
GROWS FROM
παύω
pauō
To cease, stop, or bring to rest.
“given rest” in this verse is anapepautai. The verb translated “refreshed” belongs to the language of stopping and rest: Titus’s breath is allowed to rest. The verse pictures comfort as rest reaching a person through others.
ALSO GROWS
pauō: To cease or stop.
παύω
This is the root verb beneath the form translated “refreshed.”
anapausis: Rest or respite.
ἀνάπαυσις
This related noun names the rest that the word-family gives Titus.
παρακεκλήμεθα
parakeklēmetha
GROWS FROM
παρακαλε- / παρακλη- (parakale- / paraklē-)
Comfort, console, encourage; in some contexts, urge or appeal.
“comforted / comfort” in this verse is parakeklēmetha. Greek repeats the same word-family in “we were comforted” and “your comfort.” The grammar makes the exchange unmistakable: what you give reaches back to them.
ALSO GROWS
parakaleō: To comfort, console, or urge.
παρακαλέω
This verb is the form behind “we were comforted,” making relief an action exchanged between people.
paraklēsis: Comfort, consolation, or appeal.
παράκλησις
This noun is the form behind “your comfort,” showing that the same word-family links what you give with what they receive.
THE PATTERN
Relief travels through words and presence: what lifts one person can become encouragement for another.
Heaviness in the heart of a man bows it down, but a good word gladdens it.Who comforts us in all our pressure, so that we are able to comfort those in every pressure, through the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.Therefore, comfort one another and build one another up, just as you are already doing.THE THREAD
And when he had said this, he breathed into them, and said to them, Take in the Set-Apart Breath.Here, πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath or spirit) is what receives rest; in John the same word follows Jesus’s act of breathing on the disciples. The shared word keeps “spirit” close to breath and lets Titus’s refreshment read as rest reaching his living breath.
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