What Does 1 Peter 4:4 Mean in the King James?
Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of 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 crowd’s excess becomes its test of belonging, so your refusal makes you look like a stranger.
THE MEANING
The pressure to belong can make shared excess feel like the normal current. When you do not join it, people may treat you as a foreigner and speak against you. Their reaction marks the distance between your course and the excess they expect you to share.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that being treated as strange proves your refusal is wrong; here, that judgment rises from the excess others expect you to join.
THE ROOT
ξενίζονται
xenizontai
GROWS FROM
ξεν- (xen-), from ξένος (xenos)
Stranger, foreigner, or guest; someone unfamiliar or outside the group.
“think it strange” in this verse is xenizontai. The ξεν- word family holds both the stranger and the guest: an outsider can be regarded as alien or received with hospitality. Here, the crowd treats your refusal as foreign, exposing how its shared excess defines belonging.
ALSO GROWS
xenos: Stranger, foreigner, or guest.
ξένος
The root names the outsider the crowd thinks it sees in your refusal.
xenodocheō: Receive or welcome strangers as guests.
ξενοδοχέω
The same root can describe welcoming the outsider, while this verse shows a crowd marking someone as strange.
ἀσωτίας
asōtias
GROWS FROM
ἀσωτ-
asōt-
Dissipation, wasteful excess, or reckless indulgence.
This word family describes more than a lively gathering: it names a way of spending oneself in excess. Its use for the prodigal son’s wasteful life makes the verse’s “riot” sound like dissipation that consumes what it touches.
ALSO GROWS
asōtōs: Wastefully, recklessly, or prodigally.
ἀσώτως
Luke 15:13 uses this related form for the son who wastes his substance in riotous living, echoing Peter’s word-family for excess.
asōtia: Dissipation or debauchery.
ἀσωτία
Ephesians 5:18 uses the same noun for the excess associated with drunkenness, clarifying the kind of conduct at issue.
THE PATTERN
Refusing to join a crowd’s destructive conduct can mark a person as an outsider to that crowd.
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.THE THREAD
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:The same ξεν- word family appears here: “think it not strange” and “strange thing” both echo the word used when others find your refusal strange. The shared root connects social rejection with the feeling that hardship itself is foreign.
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