What Does Hebrews 4:15 Mean?
For we do not have a high priest who cannot suffer alongside our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way as we are, apart from falling short.
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 we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.THE KEY
The high priest’s sympathy is shared suffering from inside human weakness, not pity from a distance.
THE MEANING
Your weakness does not place you beyond the reach of the one who meets you: he knows the pressure of human testing from within. The testing is real and complete, yet he meets it without himself missing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being tested is itself failure: the verse distinguishes the test from missing. It also dissolves the fear that weakness makes you unreachable.
THE ROOT
συμπαθῆσαι
sympathēsai
GROWS FROM
πάσχω
paschō
To undergo, experience, or suffer; in this compound, to suffer with.
“touched with the feeling” in this verse is sympathēsai. The word carries more than noticing another’s pain: it names sharing in the experience. The verse presents compassion as knowledge of pressure from within.
ALSO GROWS
pathēma: Suffering; what is undergone.
πάθημα
It shares the root’s sense of lived experience, showing that sympathy reaches into what another bears.
sympathēs: Sharing in another’s suffering; sympathetic.
συμπαθής
The same “suffer with” idea makes the high priest’s nearness more than distant awareness.
ἀσθενείαις
astheneiais
GROWS FROM
σθένος
sthenos
Strength or vigor; with the privative prefix in this word, weakness or lack of strength.
“weaknesses” in this verse is astheneiais. The verse names human vulnerability as weakness, not as a moral failure. This is the very condition the high priest meets with shared understanding.
ALSO GROWS
asthenēs: Weak; lacking strength.
ἀσθενής
It makes the shared human condition explicit: weakness is something experienced, not a verdict about a person.
astheneō: To be weak or ill.
ἀσθενέω
The verb shows weakness as a lived state that can be encountered and understood.
ἁμαρτίας
hamartias
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
To miss or go wrong; a missing.
“apart from falling short” in this verse is hamartias. The verse places testing beside missing, then says the testing occurs without missing. It preserves the difference between undergoing pressure and failing within it.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss or err.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb gives the root’s action: missing is something distinct from being tested.
hamartēma: An error or a missing.
ἁμάρτημα
It names the result of missing, sharpening the verse’s distinction between pressure and failure.
THE PATTERN
Shared suffering and unbroken integrity can belong to the same figure.
He is despised and left off by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And as one hiding the face, we hid our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not reckon him.For in that he himself has suffered while being tested, he can run to the cry of those being tested.Who never missed the mark, nor was bait found in his mouth;THE THREAD
For in that he himself has suffered while being tested, he can run to the cry of those being tested.The same Greek verb πειράζω (peirazō), “test or tempt,” underlies the testing in both verses. Hebrews 2:18 makes the connection plain: he knows the test through experience, and that shared experience makes him able to help.
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