What Does Philippians 2:4 Mean?
Each of you, do not fix your eyes on your own things, but also on the things of others.
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
Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.THE KEY
The verse treats attention as a field that widens: another person’s concerns enter the same line of sight as your own.
THE MEANING
Your concerns remain in view, while the concerns of others also enter your field of attention. The verse speaks to you in a shared human space where another person’s interests count alongside yours.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that only your own concerns deserve a place in your attention.
THE ROOT
σκοπέω
skopeō
GROWS FROM
σκοπ-
skop-
to watch, observe, or direct attention toward something
“fix your eyes” in this verse is skopeō. Here, “look” means deliberate attention, not a passing glance. The verse widens that attention so another person’s concerns come into view alongside your own.
ALSO GROWS
skopos: mark, target, or goal
σκοπός
A target gives attention a direction; here, another person’s concerns enter that direction.
episkopeō: to oversee or watch over
ἐπισκοπέω
The same root’s watchfulness can extend into care for what is happening to another.
THE PATTERN
Shared regard expands beyond one’s own concerns to include another person’s needs and good.
If you see the donkey of the one who hates you crouching under his load, and would hold back from helping him, you shall surely unload it with him.Therefore all things whatever you want people to do to you, do the same to them; for this is the instruction and the prophets.Let each of us please the neighbor for the good, toward the building up.THE THREAD
Brothers, be fellow imitators of me, and watch those who walk this way, just as you have us for an imprint.The word translated “mark” here is the same verb translated “look” in Philippians 2:4. In one verse, attention rests on others’ concerns; in the other, it notices people whose way of walking offers a pattern.
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