What Does Galatians 5:20 Mean?
Image-service, potion-craft, hatreds, strife, jealousies, rushes of anger, rivalries, splits, chosen sides,
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
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,THE KEY
The list ends with a word for choosing: division takes shape when a position hardens into a party.
THE MEANING
Rivalry heats into anger, contention grows into separation, and chosen camps harden. The verse names this fracture as a present pattern in shared life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a faction is harmless simply because the people inside it feel certain: the verse names faction-making among the forces that fracture life.
THE ROOT
αἱρέσεις
haireseis
GROWS FROM
αἱρέω
haireō
The Greek noun αἵρεσις (hairesis) means a choice and can also mean a party or sect formed around a position.
“chosen sides” in this verse is haireseis. Under “heresies” lies the sense of choosing and, in use, a chosen party or sect. A position can become a boundary between people; the list ends with division made visible in a community.
ALSO GROWS
haireomai: Choose or take for oneself.
αἱρέομαι
This related verb makes the choosing within the word audible: taking a position can become taking a side.
hairetikos: Factious; associated with a party or faction.
αἱρετικός
This related form brings out the social consequence: a chosen position can divide people into competing groups.
THE PATTERN
When allegiance turns into rivalry and faction, shared life breaks into disorder.
A false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sends out strife among brothers.Now I urge you, brothers, by the nature of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no rending among you, but that you be mended together in the same mind and the same judgment.For where boiling and strife are, there is no standing still and every base deed.THE THREAD
For there must also be factions among you, so that the tested ones may be made visible among you.The same Greek noun appears there among people gathered together, showing its force includes factions within a community. That link makes the final word here relational: a chosen position can divide people who share the same space.
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