What Does Philippians 2:18 Mean?
For the same cause, you also rejoice, and rejoice together with me.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me.THE KEY
The second joy is not a repeat: “with me” turns gladness from a private feeling into shared participation.
THE MEANING
Your gladness is not sealed off inside you; this verse holds joy as something shared between you and another. Rejoicing with someone lets their joy become part of a common life, just as sorrow can be shared.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that another person’s joy diminishes yours, or belongs only to the person feeling it, falls away here.
THE ROOT
συγχαίρω
synchairō
GROWS FROM
χαίρω
chairō
Rejoice; be glad
“rejoice together with me” in this verse is synchairō. English can make the two phrases sound like separate acts: being joyful, then rejoicing with someone. The second Greek verb is built from the same joy-root and adds “with,” showing joy shared between people rather than repeated as a separate emotion.
ALSO GROWS
chairō: Rejoice; be glad
χαίρω
This is the base verb behind both the call to rejoice and the call to rejoice together.
chara: Joy
χαρά
The related noun names the gladness that the verb expresses, linking joy within a person to rejoicing shared with another.
synchairō: Rejoice together; share another’s joy
συγχαίρω
The added σύν (syn, with or together) makes the joy explicitly relational: another person is included in it.
THE PATTERN
Joy becomes communal when one person enters and shares another person’s gladness.
Ring out, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and leap with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be filled.THE THREAD
Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.Romans uses χαίρω (chairō, rejoice), the same joy-root built into συγχαίρω (synchairō, rejoice together) here. Its paired call to share another’s sorrow shows that shared joy belongs to a wider way of being present to another.
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