What Does Galatians 4:11 Mean in the King James?
I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
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
A person’s care can be fully spent while its intended fruit remains unrealized.
THE MEANING
You can be the one toward whom another has labored while the outcome of that effort remains uncertain. The verse lets care and fear coexist: the work is real, yet its intended fruit may not have taken root. Its concern is personal, not abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sincere effort guarantees a lasting result: labor can be real while its fruit remains uncertain.
THE ROOT
κεκοπίακα
kekopíaka
GROWS FROM
κοπ
kop-
Strike or cut; in this word family, toil that wears a person down.
“labour” in this verse is kekopíaka. The kop- family holds the force of striking beside the wear of toil: labor is exertion that leaves its mark. The verse names the painful gap between real expenditure and the fruit it was meant to produce.
ALSO GROWS
kóptō: Strike, cut; also beat the breast in grief.
κόπτω
It reveals the physical force carried by this family of words for labor and weariness.
kópos: Toil, weariness, labor.
κόπος
This noun names the exhaustion produced by sustained exertion, the kind of labor the verse fears may yield nothing.
THE PATTERN
Labor reaches its intended fruit through a sustaining ground, not by effort alone.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.THE THREAD
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.The same Greek kop- family appears in “your labour,” now declared not vain “in the Lord.” That echo makes the question in Galatians precise: whether real expenditure has found the ground where it bears fruit.
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