What Does 1 Peter 4:15 Mean in the King James?
But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.
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 “busybody” pictures an overseer of what belongs to someone else, placing intrusive oversight among the harms named in the verse.
THE MEANING
This verse names suffering tied to murder, theft, wrongdoing, or intrusion into another person’s affairs. Suffering alone does not make its cause righteous; the verse makes the cause matter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that suffering automatically proves a person is suffering for doing right.
THE ROOT
ἀλλοτριεπίσκοπος
allotriepiskopos
GROWS FROM
σκοπ- (in ἐπίσκοπος; compounded with ἀλλότριος)
σκοπ- carries the sense of looking or watching. In this compound, ἀλλότριος (allotrios, belonging to another) joins ἐπίσκοπος (episkopos, overseer), making a busybody an overseer of what belongs to someone else.
English “busybody” can sound like mere meddling or fussing. The Greek word gives it the shape of unauthorized oversight: watching over another person’s domain as though it were yours.
ALSO GROWS
allotrios: Belonging to another; foreign
ἀλλότριος
This component marks the affairs as someone else’s, which makes the intrusion visible.
episkopos: Overseer; one who watches over
ἐπίσκοπος
This component supplies the oversight image behind the word translated “busybody.”
skopeō: To look at, observe, or watch
σκοπέω
This word shares the σκοπ- stem and keeps the compound’s image of watching in view.
THE PATTERN
Intrusion into affairs that belong to another turns attention into a source of disorder.
He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.THE THREAD
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.The Greek ἐπίσκοπος (episkopos, “overseer”) inside Peter’s compound is the same word rendered “overseers” here. In Acts, oversight is directed to the flock entrusted to its care; Peter’s compound names the inversion, oversight extending into what belongs to another.
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