What Does Ephesians 4:31 Mean?
Let all bitterness, and boiling, and anger, and shouting, and speaking against, be lifted from you, with all wickedness.
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
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:THE KEY
The Greek word for “bitterness” is the same one Hebrews calls a root that can spread, while this verse names it as something to be removed from you.
THE MEANING
Bitterness, wrath, anger, shouting, slander, and malice are named plainly as things to be put away from you now. The verse treats them as removable, not as the nature of the person who carries them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that resentment has become so familiar it must be part of your nature.
THE ROOT
πικρία
pikría
GROWS FROM
πικρ-
pikr-
bitter or sharp
The Greek noun here is the same word Hebrews 12:15 uses for a root of bitterness that springs up and troubles many. Its root links bitterness with a sharpness that can take hold and spread, which gives weight to the verse naming it for removal.
ALSO GROWS
pikrós: bitter, sharp
πικρός
This adjective carries the same sharp, bitter sense at the root of the condition named here.
pikrainō: to make bitter, to embitter
πικραίνω
This related verb appears in Colossians 3:19; the shared root connects bitterness with something that can take hold in a relationship.
ἀρθήτω
arthētō
GROWS FROM
αἴρω
airō
lift, take up, take away
“lifted” in this verse is arthētō. The verb behind “be put away” carries the sense of lifting or taking something away. The verse presents bitterness and malice as things removed from you, rather than fixed parts of who you are.
ALSO GROWS
exairō: to remove, expel
ἐξαίρω
In 1 Corinthians 5:13, this compound of the same root appears in “put away from among yourselves,” echoing the removal language here.
airō: to take away, lift up
αἴρω
In John 1:29, this verb describes taking away the sin of the world, showing how it can name the removal of a burden.
THE PATTERN
Bitterness and anger are treated as forces that can grow or spread, and scripture names them as things that can be relinquished.
Release the flaring nostril, and leave the heat. Do not burn yourself to do evil.Keeping watch, lest any fall short of the favor of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up crowd you, and through it the many be stained.But now you also take off all of these, anger, heat, malice, blasphemy, and shameful words out of your mouth.THE THREAD
Keeping watch, lest any fall short of the favor of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up crowd you, and through it the many be stained.Hebrews uses the same Greek noun, πικρία (pikría, “bitterness”), then pictures it as a root that springs up and troubles many. That image opens Ephesians further: what is named for removal can otherwise take hold and spread through a shared life.
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