What Does John 7:2 Mean?
Now the feast of the tents of the Jews was near.
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
Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand.THE KEY
The feast of tabernacles is named for tent-pitching, and John later uses that same tent-root for the Word dwelling among us.
THE MEANING
This verse places you near a feast whose name carries the image of a tent being raised among people. Its shelter is portable: the image makes room for presence among ordinary life, rather than only in a fixed place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the assumption that sacred nearness belongs only in permanent structures; the feast’s name points to dwelling in a tent.
THE ROOT
σκηνοπηγία
skēnopēgia
GROWS FROM
σκην-
skēn-
A tent, booth, or temporary dwelling. The feast name combines this tent-stem with the idea of fixing or erecting.
“feast of the tents” in this verse is skēnopēgia. The Greek word σκηνοπηγία (skēnopēgia, tent-pitching) contains σκηνή (skēnē, tent), the same stem used in John 1:14 for the Word who “dwelt” among us. The English word “tabernacles” preserves the shelter image; the shared Greek stem lets the verse echo that image as presence among people.
ALSO GROWS
skēnē: Tent, booth, or dwelling
σκηνή
This is the tent word inside the name of the feast, keeping its shelter image visible.
skēnoō: To dwell in a tent; to tabernacle
σκηνόω
John uses this verb for the Word dwelling among us, linking the feast’s tent image with presence among people.
THE PATTERN
Divine presence is pictured as a dwelling set among people, from portable shelter to shared home.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.And I hear a great voice from the throne, saying, Look, the tent of God is with humankind, and he will pitch his tent among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.THE THREAD
And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.The Greek word ἐσκήνωσεν (eskēnōsen, dwelt in a tent) shares the σκην- (skēn-, tent or dwelling) stem in σκηνοπηγία (skēnopēgia, tent-pitching), the feast named here. The festival’s tent image opens into the Gospel’s picture of the Word dwelling among us.
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