What Does 2 Thessalonians 3:15 Mean?
Yet do not hold him as an enemy, but set him in mind as a brother.
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
Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.THE KEY
Correction does not cancel kinship: the one being corrected is still addressed as family, not recast as an enemy.
THE MEANING
The person’s wrongdoing does not erase the relationship in the moment of correction. Truth is spoken while the person remains a brother; the rebuke takes place within kinship rather than replacing it with hostility.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that someone who acts wrongly becomes an enemy, and that correcting them means rejecting them.
THE ROOT
ἀδελφόν
adelphon
GROWS FROM
ἀ- + δελφύς
From the image of sharing a womb: a sibling, one born from the same womb.
The word translated “brother” carries shared origin within it. The correction does not make the person family again; it addresses them as family already.
ALSO GROWS
adelphē: sister
ἀδελφή
The feminine form shares the same kinship word family, showing that the bond is about shared belonging.
adelphotēs: brotherhood or sibling community
ἀδελφότης
The individual word opens into a whole community of siblings, making correction a practice within shared kinship.
νουθετεῖτε
noutheteite
GROWS FROM
νοῦς + τίθημι
To put or set something in the mind; to bring a warning or counsel to someone’s attention.
“set him in mind” in this verse is noutheteite. The verb pictures correction as placing something before the mind, so the person can face what is wrong. Its force is direct, but the verse places that directness inside the relationship named by “brother.”
ALSO GROWS
nouthesia: admonition or warning
νουθεσία
This noun names the counsel itself, keeping the focus on making a matter clear to the person.
tithēmi: put, set, place
τίθημι
This component of the compound contributes the image of setting something before the mind rather than casting the person away.
ἐχθρόν
echthron
GROWS FROM
ἐχθρ-
Hostility or enmity; an adversary.
The verse names “enemy” as a status the community must not assign to the wrongdoer. The contrast is between holding someone in hostility and addressing them within kinship.
ALSO GROWS
echthra: enmity or hostility
ἔχθρα
This noun names the hostile condition the verse refuses to make the relationship’s defining frame.
echthreuō: be hostile or treat as an enemy
ἐχθρεύω
This verb makes the contrast relational: the issue is whether hostility governs how the person is treated.
THE PATTERN
Correction names what is wrong while keeping the person inside the relationship.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely set your neighbor straight, and not carry falling short upon him.Brothers, even if a person is caught in a stumble, you who are of the breath, mend such a one in the breath of gentleness, watching yourself, lest you also be tested.Now we urge you, brothers. Admonish those who are out of line, comfort those faint in living soul, hold up the weak, and be slow to heat toward all.THE THREAD
And I myself am persuaded of you, brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able also to set minds in one another.Romans 15:14 uses the same verb, νουθετέω (noutheteō), for admonishing one another. It places that shared act within a community named as “my brethren,” opening the correction here as something kin do within their bond.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us