What Does Hebrews 6:5 Mean?
And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the coming age,
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
And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,THE KEY
What the KJV calls the “world to come” is the coming age, and this verse says its powers are already tasted.
THE MEANING
You have tasted God’s good word as something encountered, and you have tasted the powers belonging to the coming age. That age is not only distant scenery; its power touches the present before its fullness arrives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s coming age is wholly inaccessible until some distant future. This verse speaks of its powers as already tasted.
THE ROOT
αἰῶνος
aiōnos
GROWS FROM
αἰών
aiōn
An age or era: a span or order of time.
The Greek phrase means “the coming age,” bringing time and unfolding into view where English can suggest a separate world. The verse says that age’s powers are already being experienced now.
ALSO GROWS
aiōnios: Of an age; age-long.
αἰώνιος
This adjective shares the same root, carrying the language of an age into descriptions of what belongs to it.
aiōnes: Ages; eras.
αἰῶνες
The plural keeps the time-shaped sense visible: the language can speak of ages, not only of a world as a place.
γευσαμένους
geusamenous
GROWS FROM
γευ- (geu-, in γεύομαι)
To taste; also to experience or partake of.
The Greek verb reaches beyond sampling a flavor to experiencing something directly. That makes “tasted” a word of encounter: God’s word and the coming age’s powers are known through experience.
ALSO GROWS
geuomai: To taste; to experience.
γεύομαι
The same verb describes Jesus “tasting” death in Hebrews 2:9, showing that it can name entering an experience, not merely sampling it.
geusis: Taste; flavor.
γεῦσις
This related noun keeps the sensory root in view: experience is pictured as something received and known directly.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses tasting to describe direct encounter with a reality, not merely information about it.
O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the messengers for the suffering of death, crowned with weight and honor, so that by the favor of God he might taste death for everyone.If indeed you have tasted that the LORD is good.THE THREAD
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the messengers for the suffering of death, crowned with weight and honor, so that by the favor of God he might taste death for everyone.Hebrews uses the same Greek verb for Jesus tasting death. Here, too, “taste” reaches beyond a passing sample: it names an experience entered directly, now applied to God’s word and the powers of the coming age.
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