What Does Colossians 3:19 Mean in the King James?
Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.
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 verse places love and bitterness in the same relationship: resentment is not separate from how love is lived.
THE MEANING
Here a husband’s love for his wife sits beside the prohibition against becoming bitter toward her. The Greek verb means “be embittered,” keeping resentment tied to the way the relationship is experienced now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that a husband’s love for his wife can be assessed apart from the bitterness he carries toward her.
THE ROOT
πικραίνεσθε
pikrainesthe
GROWS FROM
πικρ-
pikr-
Bitter; a taste-word that also describes an embittered state.
English can make bitterness sound like a private mood; the Greek verb keeps it connected to the taste-word πικρός (pikros, “bitter”). Its form here means “be embittered,” placing that bitter state within the husband’s relationship with his wife.
ALSO GROWS
pikria: Bitterness
πικρία
Ephesians 4:31 uses this noun alongside wrath and anger, showing the same word-family naming a relational climate.
pikros: Bitter
πικρός
James 3:11 uses the adjective for bitter water, keeping the family’s concrete taste-image visible beneath its figurative use.
THE PATTERN
Love is a relational posture that does not feed the heat that turns conflict into bitterness.
A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:THE THREAD
And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.Colossians uses πικραίνεσθε (pikrainesthe, “be embittered”), and Revelation uses πικράνθη (pikranthē, “became bitter”), forms of the same Greek stem πικρ- (pikr-, “bitter”). Revelation keeps the word’s taste in view, sweet in the mouth, bitter in the belly, so Colossians’ language retains its concrete edge within a relationship.
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