What Does 2 Thessalonians 3:13 Mean?
But you, brothers, do not give out in doing good.
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
But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.THE KEY
“Well doing” is the making of what is good and fitting, so weariness can touch the doer without making the good worthless.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you as kin amid ongoing good work, naming that work as what is good and fitting. Weariness may press against it, but it is not evidence that the work has lost its worth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that fatigue proves your good work has become pointless.
THE ROOT
καλοποιοῦντες
kalopoiountes
GROWS FROM
ποιέω
poieō
To make, do, or bring about; joined here with καλός (kalos), meaning good, fine, beautiful, or fitting.
“doing good” in this verse is kalopoiountes. The Greek word joins kalos, “good” or “beautiful,” with poieō, “make” or “do.” Good-doing is pictured as bringing forth what is fitting; the verb’s family also names both what is made and the one who makes it.
ALSO GROWS
poiēma: A thing made; workmanship.
ποίημα
This branch makes the action concrete: good is something brought forth, not merely a quality named.
poiētēs: A maker or doer.
ποιητής
The same root names the one who acts, keeping the verse’s focus on ongoing, embodied work.
THE PATTERN
Good takes shape through acts that continue before their fruit is visible.
While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.So then, my beloved brothers, be steady, unmoved, always overflowing in the work of the Lord, seeing that your toil is not empty in the Lord.THE THREAD
While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.The Greek shares the verb family for growing weary and the good-doing roots kalos and poieō. Galatians adds the harvest: the work continues through a season before its fruit appears.
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