What Does 2 Corinthians 10:2 Mean in the King James?
But I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold against some, which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.
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
“Walked” describes a whole course of life, so the accusation reaches for what governs a person, not merely where the body goes.
THE MEANING
You can live in a body without letting merely human force set the direction of your life. The speaker holds courage in reserve for those who mistake embodied presence for conduct governed by the flesh.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A mild presence proves weakness, and bodily life means the body’s limits are in command.
THE ROOT
περιπατοῦντας
peripatountas
GROWS FROM
πατέω (patéō), with περί (perí)
To tread or step; the compound carries the sense of walking about.
“walked” in this verse is peripatountas. The Greek verb can describe literal walking and a person’s course of conduct. The charge concerns what shapes that whole course, not simply the fact that someone has a body.
ALSO GROWS
patéō: To tread or step.
πατέω
The walking image begins with steps on the ground and extends to the steps that shape a life.
katapatéō: To trample or tread underfoot.
καταπατέω
This related compound makes the shared movement tangible: the same root for treading can describe a person’s manner of going through life.
σάρκα
sarka
GROWS FROM
σάρξ
sarx
Flesh; bodily substance, and by extension the human sphere in its creaturely limits.
The phrase κατὰ σάρκα (kata sarka, “according to flesh”) says more than that someone has a body: it describes a way of acting measured by human means. The next verse holds embodiment and rule apart, saying the speaker walks in the flesh but does not fight according to the flesh.
ALSO GROWS
sarkinos: Fleshly in the sense of having the substance or quality of flesh.
σάρκινος
This branch keeps the physical sense in view: being embodied does not by itself establish what governs a person’s conduct.
sarkikos: Pertaining to flesh; in some contexts, governed by fleshly concerns.
σαρκικός
This branch shows how “flesh” can describe a governing mode, the distinction the verse raises.
THE PATTERN
A life can move through embodied conditions without taking those conditions as its governing rule.
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.THE THREAD
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:The next line names the distinction this verse is guarding: walking in the flesh describes embodied life, while warring after the flesh describes a governing method. The repeated roots for “walk” and “flesh” keep being in a body distinct from being ruled by flesh.
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