What Does Colossians 1:5 Mean?
For the hope laid away for you in the heavens, which you heard before in the word of the truth of the good news.
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
For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;THE KEY
The gospel does not ask you to manufacture hope; it lets you hear of a hope already laid up for you beyond sight.
THE MEANING
Your hope is already held in reserve for you in heaven; it does not depend on your ability to summon optimism. The gospel makes that unseen hope hearable as truth now: what is beyond your sight is not therefore unreal or absent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that if you cannot see or feel hope, it does not exist yet and you must create it yourself.
THE ROOT
ἀποκειμένην
apokeimenēn
GROWS FROM
κεῖμαι
keimai
To lie, be placed, or be situated.
“laid away” in this verse is apokeimenēn. The hope is described with a verb built on keimai: it is positioned for you, not generated by your mood. Its companion compounds preserve the image of something placed before someone or reclining in a definite place.
ALSO GROWS
prokeimai: To lie before; be set before.
πρόκειμαι
In Hebrews 6:18, hope is set before us. The shared root makes hope something already placed within reach.
anakeimai: To recline, especially at a meal.
ἀνάκειμαι
This compound uses the same core image of lying or being placed, showing how the root extends into a settled position.
ἀληθείας
alētheias
GROWS FROM
ληθ- (lēth-) / λανθάνω (lanthanō)
To be hidden or escape notice; the traditional formation of alētheia points toward what is not hidden.
The word is traditionally read with a- (“not”) and the lēth- family of hiding or escaping notice: truth is what comes out of concealment. Here, the gospel brings the hope laid up beyond sight into what you can hear.
ALSO GROWS
lanthanō: To be hidden; escape notice.
λανθάνω
This related word makes the contrast within alētheia visible: truth is not lost in concealment.
lēthē: Forgetfulness; oblivion.
λήθη
It shows the hiding and forgetting carried by the lēth- family, against which truth stands as what is disclosed.
alēthēs: True; real.
ἀληθής
This related form joins truth with reality, echoing the verse’s claim that the unseen hope is still real.
THE PATTERN
What is laid up beyond present sight remains a real good, held beyond the reach of decay or loss.
How great is your goodness, which you store up for those in awe of you, which you work for those who take shelter in you before the sons of men!But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust gnaws them out of sight, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal.into an inheritance that cannot be ruined, and cannot be stained, and cannot wither, kept in the heavens for you,THE THREAD
So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.Colossians calls hope apokeimai, “laid up,” while Hebrews calls it prokeimai, “set before us”; both carry the root keimai, “to lie or be placed.” Hope is held in reserve for you and set before you to take hold of.
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