What Does 1 Corinthians 5:9 Mean in the King James?
I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
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 word translated “company with” pictures association as mixing, so the verse draws a line around entanglement rather than mere proximity.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now to the difference between encountering people and mixing your life with a pattern. The Greek image behind “company with” is mingling, so the boundary concerns entanglement, not simple proximity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse does not mean you must avoid every sexually immoral person; the next verse says that would require going out of the world.
THE ROOT
συναναμίγνυσθαι
sunanamignysthai
GROWS FROM
μίγνυμι
mignymi
To mix or mingle.
The Greek verb behind “company with” is built on the word for mixing, turning social association into an image of mingling. English can make the phrase sound like simple proximity; the root carries the sense of joining in a shared mixture.
ALSO GROWS
mignymi: To mix or mingle.
μίγνυμι
This basic verb supplies the image beneath the verse’s language of association.
sunanamignymi: To associate or mingle together.
συναναμίγνυμι
This compound form names the kind of shared association the verse places a boundary around.
THE PATTERN
Shared company shapes the direction of a life, so Scripture treats association as participation with consequences.
He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.THE THREAD
Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.The next verse repeats the same Greek verb for “company with” and makes clear that it cannot mean total withdrawal from sexually immoral people in the world. The shared root shows the distinction: the concern is a particular kind of association, not mere human proximity.
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