What Does 2 Peter 1:15 Mean?
And I will also press that, after my going out, you may always be able to hold these things in remembrance.
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
Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.THE KEY
The word translated “decease” is ἔξοδος (exodos, “departure” or “way out”): the speaker leaves, but what has been entrusted to memory can remain.
THE MEANING
What is carefully entrusted to memory remains available after the voice that carries it departs. Remembrance holds the teaching across absence, so the speaker’s leaving does not erase what the hearer has received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s death makes everything they gave inaccessible: the voice departs, while its words can still be recalled.
THE ROOT
μνήμην
mnēmēn
GROWS FROM
μνη-
mnē-
To remember or call to mind.
The Greek word belongs to the same word family as verbs for reminding and nouns for recall. Remembrance here is not merely keeping a fact in storage; it keeps what was taught available to be brought back to mind after the speaker’s departure.
ALSO GROWS
hypomimnēskō: to remind, bring to mind
ὑπομιμνῄσκω
This same memory family makes remembrance active: what is received can be called back to mind.
anamnēsis: remembrance, recall
ἀνάμνησις
This related word shows remembrance as a returning to mind, fitting the verse’s promise that the teaching remains accessible.
ἔξοδον
exodon
GROWS FROM
ὁδός (hodos, “way”) with ἐξ- (ex-, “out”)
A way out; an exit or departure.
The verse names death with a word built around going out, an exit. It holds the departure plainly while setting it beside remembrance, which carries the teaching into the hearers’ present.
ALSO GROWS
exodos: departure, going out
ἔξοδος
This is the noun’s base form and names the speaker’s death as a departure.
hodos: way, road
ὁδός
This is the way within the compound, giving the word for departure the image of a way out.
THE PATTERN
Teaching can outlast a single voice when it is carried forward through remembrance and transmission.
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.But the One who comes alongside, the Set-Apart Breath, which the Father will send in my nature, that one will teach you all things and will remind you of all that I said to you.And these things you heard from me among many witnesses, place beside steady people who will be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
This second letter, beloved, I now write to you, and in both of which I rouse your clear minds by way of a reminder.The same Greek memory family appears here in “remembrance” and in 2 Peter 3:1’s “by way of remembrance.” There, remembrance stirs the mind, showing how what is entrusted here can remain active after the speaker’s departure.
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