What Does 1 Peter 4:9 Mean in the King James?
Use hospitality one to another without grudging.
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 “hospitality” names love directed toward the stranger, making welcome a visible form of love.
THE MEANING
The stranger who enters your space meets an act the verse calls love. Yet someone can be received outwardly while a murmur of resentment makes the welcome reluctant; the verse names both the open door and its tone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
I can call resentment harmless as long as I still let someone in.
THE ROOT
φιλόξενοι
philoxenoi
GROWS FROM
ξεν- (xen-), from ξένος (xenos)
stranger, guest, or foreigner
Philoxenoi joins love or friendship (philos) with stranger (xenos): hospitality is, at its root, love turned toward the unfamiliar person. The word carries more than courteous hosting; it reveals the stranger as the very person toward whom this love is directed.
ALSO GROWS
xenos: stranger, guest, or foreigner
ξένος
This is the person named inside hospitality: someone outside the circle of familiarity.
xenizō: receive or entertain as a guest
ξενίζω
This verb makes the root’s welcome concrete: the stranger is received into one’s space.
philoxenia: love of strangers; hospitality
φιλοξενία
This related noun names the same love and appears in the call to continue in hospitality in Romans 12:13.
γογγυσμοῦ
gongysmou
GROWS FROM
γογγυσ-
gongys-
murmuring or grumbling
“grudging” in this verse is gongysmou. The Greek word points to a murmur, a complaint that can escape under the breath, rather than only a private feeling of reluctance. The verse holds the welcome and its sound together: the stranger may be admitted while the mutter reveals that the reception is unwilling.
ALSO GROWS
gongyzō: murmur or grumble
γογγύζω
This verb describes the complaint that the verse excludes from the act of receiving.
gongystēs: murmurer or grumbler
γογγυστής
This related noun names a person by the grumbling that marks their speech.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes love of the stranger visible in welcome and tests that welcome by its tone.
But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.THE THREAD
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.The Greek for “entertain strangers” shares the ξεν- root carried in “hospitality” here. Hebrews opens the word further: the stranger welcomed may hold a presence the host does not yet recognize.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us