What Does 1 Corinthians 3:16 Mean in the King James?
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
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
God’s temple is a people in whom God’s breath already dwells.
THE MEANING
You are God’s sanctuary now: God’s own presence makes a home within you. The Greek addresses “you” in the plural, so this is not a private claim alone; the people together form one temple.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that God’s presence can be found only in a separate sacred building is undone here: the verse says that the people together are God’s temple, with God’s Spirit living in them.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνε-/πνέω (pne-/pneō)
To blow or breathe.
The word translated “Spirit” is pneuma, which also means breath; its word family includes the verb for blowing and the noun for breath. God’s breath is not pictured as a distant presence but as dwelling within the people who together are God’s sanctuary.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: To blow or breathe.
πνέω
This verb reveals the living motion carried in pneuma.
pnoē: Breath or a blowing.
πνοή
This related noun makes the breath meaning audible within the word family.
οἰκεῖ
oikei
GROWS FROM
οἰκ-
oik-
House or home; to inhabit.
The verb translated “dwelleth” comes from οἰκέω, meaning to inhabit or make a home, and shares its root with the word for house. Beside “temple,” it gives two images at once: you are God’s sanctuary, and God’s presence lives there as at home.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: House or home.
οἶκος
This is the home image carried by the root of “dwelleth.”
oikoumenē: The inhabited world.
οἰκουμένη
The same word family extends from a home to the world understood as inhabited.
THE PATTERN
God’s dwelling is among and within people, making them the place of divine presence.
And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.THE THREAD
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.Romans 8:11 repeats the same pairing: God’s Spirit dwells in you. It carries that indwelling presence into the mortal body itself, making the sanctuary here embodied rather than abstract.
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