What Does 1 Corinthians 5:8 Mean in the King James?

Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:8 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

A little leaven never stays in one corner of the loaf; the feast takes on whatever is working through it.

THE MEANING

You are living inside a feast shaped by what is mixed through it: malice and wickedness spread like leaven, while sincerity and truth are the unleavened bread. What works through the shared life shapes the whole.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that a little malice stays private or harmless: what is mixed into the shared life works its way through the whole.

THE ROOT

ζύμη

zymē

GROWS FROM

ζυμ-

zym-

Leavening; fermenting

The Greek puts “leaven” and “unleavened” in one word-family: ⁨ἄζυμος⁩ (azymos) is bread without the leaven. The contrast is about what is mixed into the loaf, because a little leaven works through the whole mass.

ALSO GROWS

azymos: Bread made without leaven.

ἄζυμος

It shares the leaven’s word-family while naming its absence, making the verse’s contrast a matter of what is present in the bread.

zymoō: To cause something to rise or ferment through leaven.

ζυμόω

It names the spreading action behind the image: leaven changes the mass it enters.

THE PATTERN

Whatever is mixed into a whole works its way through the whole.

Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.

Exodus 12:15 · KJVThe bread and the house are both marked by whether leaven is present.

It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

Luke 13:21 · KJVThe leaven reaches the whole measure of dough, showing how something small can work through an entire mixture.

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

Galatians 5:9 · KJVThe verse states plainly that a small amount can affect the whole.

THE THREAD

Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

1 Corinthians 5:6 · KJV

The same Greek word-family makes leaven’s action explicit: even a little works through the whole mass. This verse names what is working through the feast, malice and wickedness, or sincerity and truth.

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