What Does 1 Corinthians 6:5 Mean in the King James?
I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
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 rebuke exposes a community whose shame is not just its dispute but its inability to find anyone wise enough to discern between its own members.
THE MEANING
Where people are bound together, the inability to find one wise person who can discern between them exposes a fracture deeper than the dispute itself. The verse names that absence plainly as shame.
THE ROOT
διακρῖναι
diakrinai from diakrinō
GROWS FROM
κρίνω
To separate, distinguish, or decide.
The Greek verb carries the idea of distinguishing between things, so the verse’s “judge between” is an act of discernment as well as a ruling. English can make judgment sound like a verdict alone; the root reveals the missing capacity to make a wise distinction within the community.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: A judgment or decision reached by distinguishing between possibilities.
κρίσις
It shows judgment as the outcome of discernment, the very capacity the verse says is absent.
diakrisis: The ability to distinguish or evaluate.
διάκρισις
It shares the root and makes explicit the discerning faculty that “judge between” requires.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom makes distinctions that allow disputes to be judged within a community.
And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him.Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.THE THREAD
For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.The verb shares the root κρίνω (krinō), meaning to distinguish or decide, so the judgment missing between brothers appears here turned toward oneself. This opens the possibility that communal discernment includes seeing one’s own part, not only assessing another’s.
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