What Does 1 John 3:13 Mean in the King James?
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate 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
The verse names you as part of a shared family before it names the world’s rejection, so hatred does not define who you are.
THE MEANING
You do not need to be astonished if the world hates you. Your belonging is named as shared kinship, and the world’s hostility does not erase that bond. Hatred is real here, but it is not a measure of your worth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being hated by the surrounding world means I must be unworthy or mistaken.
THE ROOT
ἀδελφοί
adelphoi
GROWS FROM
δελφ (delph), from δελφύς (delphys)
womb; shared birth
The word for brethren carries the image of people born from the same womb. The verse places the reader within shared kinship, not alone before the world’s hostility.
ALSO GROWS
adelphos: brother
ἀδελφός
The singular form keeps the shared-family sense inside the address to each person.
adelphotēs: brotherhood
ἀδελφότης
This related word names a community held together as kin, reinforcing that the verse speaks to belonging as well as rejection.
κόσμος
kosmos
GROWS FROM
κοσμ
kosm
order, arrangement, adornment
Kosmos can mean the world and its ordered arrangement. The verse’s “world” is more than a place: it can name the surrounding order whose hostility meets the kinship named in “brethren.”
ALSO GROWS
kosmeō: to arrange, put in order, adorn
κοσμέω
This verb carries the sense of arranging that also lies behind kosmos.
kosmos: order, adornment; world
κόσμος
The same word holds both the sense of an ordered arrangement and the world within which the reader experiences hostility.
THE PATTERN
Hostility from the surrounding order can accompany allegiance to God’s life, so opposition alone does not define the one it targets.
They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away.If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.THE THREAD
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.The same Greek word, kosmos, appears as “world” in both verses. This verse connects the world’s hostility with its failure to recognize the children of God, so its rejection does not define their belonging.
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