What Does Ephesians 5:7 Mean?
Do not therefore become their co-sharers.
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
Be not ye therefore partakers with them.THE KEY
The warning is about sharing a portion, not merely being near people who choose differently.
THE MEANING
Your life is not sealed off from what you join: participation creates a shared portion. This verse names the boundary around joining a way shaped by empty words and disobedience.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you can share in a way of life without sharing in what it yields.
THE ROOT
συμμέτοχοι
symmetochoi
GROWS FROM
μετέχω
to share in, to have a part in
“co-sharers” in this verse is symmetochoi. The word carries the sense of sharing together in the same portion. The warning concerns entering into what another way of life holds in common, not mere proximity.
ALSO GROWS
metochos: partner, sharer, partaker
μέτοχος
Hebrews 3:14 uses this word for being a partaker of Christ, showing that participation names a bond and a shared portion.
metechō: share in, partake
μετέχω
In 1 Corinthians 10:21, this verb describes partaking of a table, making the shared portion concrete.
THE PATTERN
What you join becomes a shared participation, and the portion changes with what is joined.
Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot share in the Lord's table and the table of demons.That the nations would be joint heirs, of one body, and fellow sharers of his promise in Jesus the Anointed One through the good news.THE THREAD
That the nations would be joint heirs, of one body, and fellow sharers of his promise in Jesus the Anointed One through the good news.Ephesians 3:6 uses this same co-participation word for sharing the promise in Christ. The word names a shared portion in both verses, so the focus is what is entered into together.
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