What Does 2 Peter 1:15 Mean in the King James?
Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.
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 “decease” is ἔξοδος (exodos, “departure” or “way out”): the speaker leaves, but what has been entrusted to memory can remain.
THE MEANING
What is carefully entrusted to memory remains available after the voice that carries it departs. Remembrance holds the teaching across absence, so the speaker’s leaving does not erase what the hearer has received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s death makes everything they gave inaccessible: the voice departs, while its words can still be recalled.
THE ROOT
μνήμην
mnēmēn
GROWS FROM
μνη-
mnē-
To remember or call to mind.
The Greek word belongs to the same word family as verbs for reminding and nouns for recall. Remembrance here is not merely keeping a fact in storage; it keeps what was taught available to be brought back to mind after the speaker’s departure.
ALSO GROWS
hypomimnēskō: to remind, bring to mind
ὑπομιμνῄσκω
This same memory family makes remembrance active: what is received can be called back to mind.
anamnēsis: remembrance, recall
ἀνάμνησις
This related word shows remembrance as a returning to mind, fitting the verse’s promise that the teaching remains accessible.
ἔξοδον
exodon
GROWS FROM
ὁδός (hodos, “way”) with ἐξ- (ex-, “out”)
A way out; an exit or departure.
“decease” in this verse is exodon. The verse names death with a word built around going out, an exit. It holds the departure plainly while setting it beside remembrance, which carries the teaching into the hearers’ present.
ALSO GROWS
exodos: departure, going out
ἔξοδος
This is the noun’s base form and names the speaker’s death as a departure.
hodos: way, road
ὁδός
This is the way within the compound, giving the word for departure the image of a way out.
THE PATTERN
Teaching can outlast a single voice when it is carried forward through remembrance and transmission.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:The same Greek memory family appears here in “remembrance” and in 2 Peter 3:1’s “by way of remembrance.” There, remembrance stirs the mind, showing how what is entrusted here can remain active after the speaker’s departure.
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