What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:7 Mean in the King James?
For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
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
Sleep and drunkenness are paired beneath the same night, but the next verse places you among those who belong to the day.
THE MEANING
Sleep is the body lying down; drunkenness clouds alertness. The verse places both in the familiar rhythm of night, while the surrounding words speak to you as someone called to stay awake and clear.
THE ROOT
κοιμάω
koimaō
GROWS FROM
κεῖμαι
keimai
to lie down, be laid
The Greek word for sleep carries the sense of lying down. Beside drunkenness, it makes night a shared setting for states in which alertness recedes; the next lines call you to wakefulness and sobriety.
ALSO GROWS
koimēsis: sleep, the act of sleeping
κοίμησις
It keeps the idea of sleep tied to the act of lying down.
koimētērion: sleeping place; later, cemetery
κοιμητήριον
The word for a place of burial preserves the image of being laid down to sleep.
μεθύω
methyō
GROWS FROM
μεθυ-
methu-
to be intoxicated
“are drunken” in this verse is methyō. The verse repeats “in the night” for both sleep and drunkenness, giving them one setting without making them the same state. That pairing prepares the contrast with the wakefulness and sobriety named in the surrounding passage.
ALSO GROWS
methē: drunkenness, intoxication
μέθη
It names the condition described by the verb in the verse.
methyskō: to make drunk, intoxicate
μεθύσκω
It shows the related action that brings about intoxication.
THE PATTERN
Darkness often becomes the setting where awareness dims or people seek cover for their conduct, while light exposes what is happening.
The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.THE THREAD
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.The next verse turns the night’s ordinary pattern into a contrast: you are addressed as belonging to the day and called to sobriety. That shift makes verse 7 the backdrop for a different way of being present.
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