What Does Galatians 5:7 Mean?
You were running well; who cut across your path, so that you would not yield to the truth?
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
Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?THE KEY
You were already running well; the deeper question is whose persuasion has cut across your stride.
THE MEANING
You know what it is to run well, and you know how something can cut across that movement. The question reaches beyond pace to persuasion: what is now drawing your trust away from what is true? The interruption does not erase the movement that was already real.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A present interruption does not prove your earlier movement was false; the verse names something that has cut into a course that was genuinely going well.
THE ROOT
πείθεσθαι
peíthesthai
GROWS FROM
πείθω
peíthō
Persuade or convince; in the middle or passive voice, be persuaded, trust, or yield.
“yield to” in this verse is peíthesthai. The form πείθεσθαι (peíthesthai, “to be persuaded”) shows that obeying truth is also being won over by it. Galatians 5:8 uses this word-family for persuasion, making the interruption a question of what is persuading you.
ALSO GROWS
peíthō: Persuade, convince
πείθω
This is the verb’s basic force; the verse describes a course redirected away from truth’s persuasion.
peismonē: Persuasion
πεισμονή
Galatians 5:8 uses this related word to name the persuasion that does not come from the one calling you.
ἐνέκοψεν
enékopsen
GROWS FROM
κόπτω
kóptō
Cut or strike.
“cut across your path” in this verse is enékopsen. The verb ἐγκόπτω (enkóptō, “hinder, impede”) carries the image of something cutting into a course. The verse recognizes that you have run well while asking what has intruded across that movement.
ALSO GROWS
enkóptō: Hinder, impede, cut into
ἐγκόπτω
This is the word used in the verse: the interruption strikes into forward movement.
ekkóptō: Cut off, cut out
ἐκκόπτω
This related verb makes the cutting image vivid: an obstruction can interrupt the course itself.
ἀλήθεια
alētheia
GROWS FROM
λανθάνω
lanthánō
Escape notice or remain hidden; the truth-word family is traditionally associated with what is not concealed.
The word-family around ἀλήθεια (alētheia, “truth”) is often heard as what is brought out of concealment. Here truth is not merely information held at a distance; it is something you can be persuaded by and follow.
ALSO GROWS
lanthánō: Escape notice, remain hidden
λανθάνω
This word gives the family its image of what lies concealed from view.
alēthēs: True, truthful
ἀληθής
This related form carries the sense of what is genuine rather than concealed.
alētheia: Truth, reality
ἀλήθεια
The verse presents truth as a reality that can guide the runner’s course.
THE PATTERN
The course toward truth opens as what constricts or weighs down movement is removed.
I run the way of your commands, when you widen my heart.When you walk, your steps are not narrowed; and if you run, you do not stumble.Therefore, since we also have so great a cloud of witnesses lying around us, setting down every weight and falling short that so easily wraps around us, let us run the race lying before us, remaining under it.THE THREAD
This yielding does not come from the one who calls you.The verb πείθεσθαι (peíthesthai, “to be persuaded”) in this verse shares a word-family with πεισμονή (peismonē, “persuasion”) in the next. That connection sharpens the question: what persuasion is cutting across your course?
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