What Does 2 Timothy 2:18 Mean?
Who have missed the mark concerning the truth, saying that the rising has already come, and overturn the trust of some.
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
Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.THE KEY
A claim that resurrection is already past turns the Greek’s “standing up” into a closed event, and makes other people’s trust fall.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now whenever a confident claim says resurrection is already finished: the claim misses truth and pulls some people’s trust down with it. The hope of rising is not contained by the certainty of a mistaken account.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a confident claim about truth cannot harm another person’s trust. Here, a claim about resurrection’s timing topples the trust of some.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασις
anastasis
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι
histēmi
Stand, or set upright.
The word names a rising, literally a standing up. The claim says this rising is wholly past, while Acts 24:15 uses the same noun for a resurrection still held in hope.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: Rise, stand up.
ἀνίστημι
This verb shares the standing-up image in the verse’s “resurrection.”
histēmi: Stand, set upright.
ἵστημι
This is the root that lets “resurrection” carry the image of standing again.
ἠστόχησαν
ēstochēsan
GROWS FROM
στόχος
stochos
A target or mark; a point to aim at.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ēstochēsan. The verse frames the error as a missed aim, not merely a different opinion. The claim’s certainty does not make its direction true.
ALSO GROWS
astocheō: Miss the mark or fail to reach the aim.
ἀστοχέω
This is the verb behind “erred,” picturing a claim that does not land on truth.
stochazomai: Aim at, or form a conjecture.
στοχάζομαι
This related verb keeps the image of direction and aim visible in the word family.
πίστις
pistis
GROWS FROM
πείθω
peithō
Persuade, win confidence, or be persuaded.
The faith being overturned is trust: leaning your full weight on what you find reliable. The false claim makes that trust lose its footing.
ALSO GROWS
pisteuō: Trust, believe, or rely on.
πιστεύω
This verb shows πίστις as trust placed in someone or something.
pistos: Trustworthy, reliable.
πιστός
This branch names the steadiness that makes trust possible.
THE PATTERN
The promise of resurrection keeps opening toward life beyond what has already happened.
Your dead will live; together with my corpse they will rise. Awake and ring out, you who camp in the dust, for your dew is a dew of lights, and the earth will drop the slackened ones.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.But now the Anointed One has been awakened from the dead, and has become the first portion of those who have lain down to sleep.THE THREAD
And I hold my hope toward God, which they themselves also take hold of, that there shall be a standing up of the dead, both of the aligned and of the unaligned.This verse uses the same Greek noun, ἀνάστασις (anastasis, rising or standing up), for a resurrection still held as hope. The shared word makes the timing contrast visible: that hope is not already exhausted.
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