What Does 2 Corinthians 7:2 Mean?
Make room for us. We have made no one crooked, we have ruined no one, we have grasped more from no one.
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
Receive us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded no man.THE KEY
The verb translated “Receive” carries the image of making room: welcome is spatial, and the three denials name what has not been done to anyone within that relationship.
THE MEANING
The request to be received stands beside a claim that no one has been wronged, damaged, or used for gain. The opening verb carries a sense of making room, so welcome is pictured as space given within a relationship. Here, room for another and accountability for how they are treated stand together.
THE ROOT
χωρήσατε
chōrēsate
GROWS FROM
χωρ-
chōr-
Space or room; making place, having space, or containing.
The verb translated “Receive” belongs to a word family about making room and having space. Welcome is pictured as capacity for another within a relationship, a spatial sense that the English wording can leave hidden.
ALSO GROWS
chōreō: Make room, have space, or contain.
χωρέω
This is the verb behind “Receive”; in John 8:37, the same verb is translated “hath no place.”
chōra: A place, region, or land.
χώρα
This related noun keeps the word family’s spatial sense visible: a place is room that can be inhabited.
ἐπλεονεκτήσαμεν
epleonektēsamen
GROWS FROM
πλεονεκτ- (pleonekt-), from πλέον (pleon, more) + ἔχω (echō, have or hold)
To have or seek more; to gain advantage, especially by taking advantage of another.
“grasped more from no one” in this verse is epleonektēsamen. The Greek word translated “defrauded” carries the sense of seeking or taking more for oneself. Its word family links exploitation with greed, revealing the appetite for more beneath the harm.
ALSO GROWS
pleonexia: Greed or desire for more.
πλεονεξία
The same word family appears as “covetousness” in 1 Thessalonians 2:5, linking the denial of exploitation with the refusal of a greedy motive.
pleonektēs: A person who wants more or takes advantage of others.
πλεονέκτης
This branch names the person shaped by the same appetite for more that the verb exposes.
THE PATTERN
Receiving someone and refusing to exploit others belong to the same relational integrity.
Here I am. Answer against me before the LORD and before his anointed one. Whose ox have I taken, or whose donkey? Whom have I pressed, or whom have I crushed? From whose hand have I taken a ransom to shut my eyes with it? And I will return it to you.For we were never found in fawning words, as you know, nor in a cloak of grasping for more. God is witness.THE THREAD
I know that you are Abraham's seed, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no room in you.Both verses use χωρέω (chōreō, to make room or have space): here in the request translated “Receive us,” and there for a word that “hath no place” in someone. The shared root makes welcome a question of whether there is room for a person or a word to be received.
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