What Does 1 Corinthians 7:27 Mean in the King James?
Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.
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 verse names marriage as a bond and release as a real state, but refuses to make either one a command to chase its opposite.
THE MEANING
Where you are bound in marriage, escape is not the next thing this verse tells you to pursue. Where you are released from a wife, finding another is not made a requirement. The repeated “seek not” interrupts the assumption that the opposite state must be better.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that marriage must be escaped to be free, or that being without a wife means something is missing and must be corrected.
THE ROOT
δέδεσαι
dédese
GROWS FROM
δέω (δέω)
To bind, tie, or fasten.
“bound” in this verse is dédese. The word pictures marriage as a tie that already holds, rather than as a verdict about whether the relationship is good or bad. Set beside “loosed,” it makes the verse’s symmetry visible: it names two existing states, then says not to pursue a change from either one.
ALSO GROWS
desmos: A bond or fetter.
δεσμός
It makes the concrete image inside “bound” visible: something is tied or held.
desmios: A prisoner or one held in bonds.
δέσμιος
It shows how the same word family can describe being held by a tie, while this verse applies the image to a marital relation.
λέλυσαι
lelusai
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, untie, or release.
Like “bound,” “loosed” describes a state that is already in place. The root also appears in words for release and dismantling, so this is a word of undoing a tie; the verse presents that release without making it a lack that must be filled.
ALSO GROWS
apolyō: To release, dismiss, or send away; in some contexts, to divorce.
ἀπολύω
Its use for release, including marital dismissal, makes the release sense of “loosed” especially clear.
katalyō: To take down, dismantle, or break up.
καταλύω
It shows the wider force of the root: loosening can undo what holds something together.
THE PATTERN
A present condition is not automatically a defect that must be changed into its opposite.
Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.THE THREAD
For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.The same Greek verb, δέω (deō, “to bind”), describes the marital tie here. That shared root lets “bound” in 1 Corinthians sound like a relation that holds, rather than a judgment that the relation is bad.
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