What Does John 16:20 Mean?
Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and wail, but the world will rejoice; you will be pained, but your pain will become joy.
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
Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.THE KEY
The verse’s hidden hinge is that the sorrow you carry becomes joy.
THE MEANING
When you grieve while the world celebrates, both realities are named without one canceling the other. The sorrow you carry is not the final form it takes; it becomes joy.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that grief proves joy is gone for good.
THE ROOT
χαρήσεται
charēsetai
GROWS FROM
χαίρω (chairō; stem χαιρ-/χαρ-)
To rejoice, be glad.
“rejoice / joy” in this verse is charēsetai. The same Greek word family names the world’s rejoicing and the joy your sorrow becomes. English gives one a verb and the other a noun, while Greek keeps both within the same movement of rejoicing.
ALSO GROWS
charēsetai: Will rejoice
χαρήσεται
This names the world’s rejoicing in the verse, from the same family as the joy your sorrow becomes.
chara: Joy
χαρά
This names the outcome in the same word family, joining outward rejoicing and the joy emerging from sorrow.
γενήσεται
genēsetai
GROWS FROM
γίνομαι (ginomai; γιν-/γεν-)
To become, come to be, happen.
The Greek verb says that sorrow will become joy: grief changes into a new state. The next verse pictures this change through labor and birth, an image of what comes forth through the sorrow.
ALSO GROWS
genesis: Origin, birth, coming into being
γένεσις
It carries the same sense of something coming to be, echoing sorrow’s becoming joy.
genos: Kind, offspring, family
γένος
It belongs to the same coming-into-being word family, opening the birth image that follows in the passage.
THE PATTERN
Grief can be the passage through which joy arrives, without the grief being denied.
For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.To set for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a headdress in place of ash, the oil of leaping for mourning, the garment of praise in place of a dimmed breath; that they might be called oaks of alignment, the planting of the LORD, that he might be adorned.Flourishing are the hungering now, for you will be filled. Flourishing are the weeping now, for you will laugh.THE THREAD
So now you have pain, but again I will perceive you, and your heart will rejoice, and no one lifts your joy away from you.The same χαίρω/χαρά word family returns in “your heart shall rejoice” and “your joy.” The next verse carries the turn further: the joy that meets sorrow is not taken away.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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