What Does Hebrews 13:3 Mean in the King James?
Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
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 turns remembrance into shared embodiment: the person in confinement is already bound together with you.
THE MEANING
You remember those in confinement as though you are bound alongside them, and hold those facing adversity within the fact that you, too, live in a body. Their vulnerability belongs to the same embodied life you inhabit now; it is closer than distance makes it seem.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that another person’s suffering belongs to them alone and is separate from your own embodied life.
THE ROOT
συνδεδεμένοι
syndedemenoi
GROWS FROM
δέω
déō
To bind or tie fast.
The verb joins σύν (syn, “together”) to δέω (déō, “bind”): “bound with them” means bound together with them. The same bind-family names prisoners and the ties joining a body, so remembrance becomes shared embodied connection.
ALSO GROWS
desmiōn: Prisoners, people held in bonds.
δεσμίων
The same bind-root names the people in confinement; the verse then describes the reader as bound together with them.
syndesmos: A bond or tie; a ligament joining parts of a body.
σύνδεσμος
This bind-family can name the ties holding a body together, making the verse’s solidarity an embodied connection rather than a distant thought.
THE PATTERN
Shared bodily vulnerability makes another person’s confinement or pain a condition that reaches beyond that person.
Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor?Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.THE THREAD
And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.The Greek word rendered “bands” comes from the bind-root behind “bound with them.” Colossians uses that family for ties within a body; Hebrews applies binding to the reader’s relation to the confined, making solidarity part of the body’s structure.
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