What Does 1 Corinthians 10:8 Mean in the King James?
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verb for “commit fornication” belongs to a Greek word-family that names both the conduct and its practitioner, while the verse shows the cost reaching beyond those directly involved.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader as part of an “us”: sexual unfaithfulness can carry consequences beyond the people directly involved. Its stark number and single day hold the scale and speed of that harm in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that sexual betrayal affects only the people directly involved.
THE ROOT
πορνεύω
porneuō
GROWS FROM
πορν-
porne- word family
Sexual immorality; this Greek word-family names the conduct and related practitioners.
“commit fornication” in this verse is porneuō. Here the verb names an act, while its relatives also name the conduct and a person who practices it. That family makes the act legible as more than an isolated moment, matching the verse’s abrupt communal count.
ALSO GROWS
porneia: Sexual immorality.
πορνεία
The related noun names the conduct expressed by the verb in this verse.
pornos: A person who practices sexual immorality.
πόρνος
The same word-family can name a practitioner as well as the act, linking conduct with its agent.
THE PATTERN
A breach within a people can carry consequences beyond the people who enact it.
And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab.But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?THE THREAD
And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab.Numbers names the same act with זָנָה (zanah), “to commit sexual unfaithfulness,” and places it among the people rather than in isolation. That shared setting sharpens the verse’s warning: the consequences can reach beyond those directly involved.
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