What Does Philippians 3:11 Mean?
If somehow I may meet the standing up out from among the dead.
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
If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.THE KEY
“Resurrection” names an out-rising: the hope is to stand up from among the dead into life.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the reader in the tension of hope: resurrection is a destination still longed for, with death named plainly along its horizon. Its image is life emerging from among the dead.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that death is the final boundary of the reader’s story: the verse names an emergence from among the dead as the awaited destination.
THE ROOT
ἐξανάστασις
exanastasis
GROWS FROM
στη-/στα- (from ἵστημι, histēmi)
To stand or set upright.
“resurrection” in this verse is exanastasis. The word combines ἐξανάστασις (exanastasis, “rising out”) with the sense of standing up carried by its root. Beneath English’s single noun is a vivid movement: rising out from among the dead.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: To raise or rise up.
ἀνίστημι
This verb makes the upward movement in “resurrection” audible: the dead rise.
anastasis: A rising or resurrection.
ἀνάστασις
This related noun names the same rising, linking the verse’s “out-rising” to resurrection as standing up.
THE PATTERN
Resurrection appears as the dead being awakened and brought into life.
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground shall awake, some to the life of the ages, and some to exposure and contempt for the ages.And will come out, those who did good unto a rising of life, and those who did what is worthless unto a rising of sifting.For if we have been grown together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his rising.THE THREAD
That I may know him, and the power of his standing up again, and the sharing in common of his sufferings, being shaped together with his death.In 3:10, ἀνάστασις (anastasis, “rising” or “resurrection”) names the power of his resurrection; here, ἐξανάστασις (exanastasis, “rising out”) carries the same standing and rising root outward from among the dead. The connection keeps resurrection joined to knowing him and sharing in suffering.
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