What Does 1 Peter 1:6 Mean in the King James?
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
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 same season can hold both joy and grief: testing can wound the present without erasing the hope that anchors rejoicing.
THE MEANING
Your joy can be real while many forms of testing bring grief in this limited present season. The sorrow names what the pressure feels like now; it does not cancel the hope in which your rejoicing is rooted.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that grief means joy is false, or that a joyful person must feel no sorrow.
THE ROOT
πειρασμοῖς
peirasmois
GROWS FROM
πειρ-
peir-
to attempt, test, or put through trial
The Greek noun translated “temptations” can also name trials or tests; its range is wider than a lure toward wrongdoing. The verse describes varied pressure that brings real grief, without suggesting that the pain is imaginary.
ALSO GROWS
peirazō: To test or put someone through a trial.
πειράζω
This verbal branch shows the testing sense held within the noun translated “temptations.”
peirasmos: A trial, test, or temptation.
πειρασμός
This is the same noun in its dictionary form, linking Peter’s phrase to other passages about testing.
λυπηθέντες
lypēthentes
GROWS FROM
λυπ-
lyp-
grief, sorrow, felt distress
The Greek form translated “heaviness” comes from λυπέω, “to grieve”; it names felt sorrow, not merely a weight. This word family also describes deep grief, so the verse holds sorrow and rejoicing together without asking the grief to disappear.
ALSO GROWS
lypē: Sorrow or distress.
λύπη
This noun makes clear that the heaviness in the verse is experienced grief.
lypeō: To grieve or cause sorrow.
λυπέω
This verb is the source of the form used here, presenting grief as a real experience of the present season.
perilypos: Very sorrowful or deeply grieved.
περίλυπος
The same word family can name profound sorrow, showing that rejoicing does not depend on emotional numbness.
THE PATTERN
Present distress can be fully acknowledged while joy remains rooted in something it does not erase.
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;THE THREAD
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;James uses the same Greek noun πειρασμός (peirasmos, trial or testing) that Peter uses for “temptations.” Peter makes the emotional reality explicit: these trials can bring grief now while joy is still present.
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