What Does Matthew 6:25 Mean in the King James?

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Matthew 6:25 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

What you need to live does not measure the full life those needs serve.

THE MEANING

Your living soul exceeds the food it needs, and your body exceeds its clothing. The verse speaks to you now: the necessities of life are real, but they do not contain all that you are.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that if a necessity is uncertain, your life itself is reduced to that uncertainty.

THE ROOT

ψυχή

psychē

GROWS FROM

ψυχ

psych

living soul; the living self

English “life” can sound like bare biological continuation, while ⁨ψυχή⁩ names the living soul, the whole living self. Jesus sets that living self beside food and the body beside clothing, so provision is real but cannot contain the life it serves.

ALSO GROWS

psychē: living soul; the living self

ψυχή

This is the word translated “life” here, naming the person whose life exceeds food.

psychikos: natural; belonging to the living soul

ψυχικός

This related form shows the same root describing what belongs to the living self, keeping the verse’s focus on a whole person rather than mere sustenance.

THE PATTERN

The living person exceeds bodily provision, which sustains life without containing its source or fullness.

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

Deuteronomy 8:3 · KJVBread sustains the body, while the verse locates human life within a source larger than bread.

These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

Psalm 104:27 · KJVFood is shown as provision received within a living dependence that reaches beyond the food itself.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

John 6:35 · KJVThe image of bread opens into life that answers hunger and thirst at a deeper level than bodily provision.

THE THREAD

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

Deuteronomy 8:3 · KJV

Matthew names the living soul as more than food; Deuteronomy gives that excess its ground: a human life is sustained by more than bread, by what comes from the LORD’s mouth. Food is one provision within a larger sustaining word.

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