What Does 2 Corinthians 11:24 Mean in the King James?
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.
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 count holds both the boundary and the blow in view: thirty-nine is still a beating.
THE MEANING
The verse keeps injury concrete: each beating is counted, and repetition does not make it unreal. The number sits one below Deuteronomy’s ceiling of forty, so restraint and violence remain visible in the same line.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being within a limit does not make harm harmless; what is measured and repeated can still wound.
THE ROOT
ἔλαβον
elabon
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω
to take or receive
The Greek wording says, “I received forty less one,” leaving the lashes implicit in the beating context. The verb’s range includes taking and receiving; here it makes the body the receiver of the violence, while the exact count keeps the harm measurable.
ALSO GROWS
paralambanō: receive, take along
παραλαμβάνω
This compound carries the root’s sense of receiving into an action of taking alongside.
katalambanō: seize, lay hold of
καταλαμβάνω
The same root can name forceful taking; beside this verse’s receiving, it makes the verb’s range visible while the body bears the blows.
THE PATTERN
A body can carry a precise record of violence even when its measure is bounded.
Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.THE THREAD
Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.Deuteronomy makes forty the ceiling, and the count of thirty-nine echoes that boundary. The limit registers restraint, while the repeated beating remains real.
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