What Does Ephesians 5:12 Mean?
For it is shameful even to speak of what is done by them in hiding.
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 it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.THE KEY
The word “secret” belongs to the same Greek family as “hidden,” so concealment is part of what makes these deeds shameful even to name.
THE MEANING
Some things done out of sight carry such shame that even speaking of them feels like exposure. The verse speaks now: secrecy does not change what a hidden act is, and naming it brings that concealed character into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a deed becomes harmless or weightless when it stays secret.
THE ROOT
κρυφῇ
kryphē
GROWS FROM
κρυπ-
krypt-
To hide or conceal.
“in hiding” in this verse is kryphē. The Greek word translated “in secret” belongs to the same word family as “hidden.” English makes secrecy sound like a setting around the deed; the root keeps concealment joined to the deed itself.
ALSO GROWS
kryptō: To hide or conceal.
κρύπτω
The verb makes visible the action contained in “secret”: something is being kept out of sight.
kryptos: Hidden or concealed.
κρυπτός
This adjective shares the root and shows that what is done “in secret” is literally described through the language of being hidden.
apokryphos: Hidden away or concealed.
ἀπόκρυφος
This compound extends the same root’s image: what is secret is kept tucked away from view.
THE PATTERN
Hidden deeds retain their character even when concealment keeps them out of sight.
You set our crookedness before you, our hidden things into the light of your face.For everyone who does worthless things hates the light, and does not come to the light, so that their deeds would not be exposed.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.THE THREAD
For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.Ephesians uses κρυφῇ (kryphē, secretly), from the same κρυπ- word family as κρυπτόν (krypton, hidden) in Luke. Luke makes explicit what Ephesians leaves compressed: being hidden does not protect a deed from being brought into the open.
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