What Does John 7:10 Mean?
But when his brothers had gone up, then he also went up to the feast, not in plain view, but as if in hiding.
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
But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.THE KEY
He goes to the feast even as he refuses to make his arrival a public display.
THE MEANING
Jesus is moving toward the feast, though his presence is not on open display. Secrecy marks how he goes; it does not mean he is absent or still.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that what is not publicly displayed is absent or inactive: he is still going up, even without open display.
THE ROOT
κρυπτῷ
kryptōi
GROWS FROM
κρυπ-
kryp-
To hide or keep out of sight.
“as if in hiding” in this verse is kryptōi. The Greek word describes a concealed manner of going: Jesus goes up, but without public display. The phrase “as it were” makes secrecy a description of how he goes, not a claim that he is wholly unseen.
ALSO GROWS
kryptō: To hide or conceal.
κρύπτω
This verb shares the word’s root and shows secrecy as concealment from view.
apokryphos: Hidden or concealed.
ἀπόκρυφος
This related word carries the same sense of what is kept out of sight, echoing the way Jesus goes to the feast.
THE PATTERN
Hiddenness can mark the manner of a thing’s presence without erasing its reality.
The weight of God is to hide a matter; the weight of kings is to search out a matter.So that your compassion may be in the hidden; and your Father, who sees in the hidden, himself will give it back to you in the open.For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Anointed One in God.THE THREAD
For there is nothing hidden that will not be brought to light, nor has anything become hidden away, but that it come into the open.Mark uses the same Greek word family for what is hidden, then places it beside what becomes manifest. Read beside John, it shows that secrecy describes visibility at this moment, not absence.
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