2 Corinthians 6:14 Interpretation | The Fellowship of God's Covenant People

by William Finck

The following is an explanation of my 2 Corinthians 6:14 interpretation, with the Greek transliterated as closely to English pronunciation as I can get it.

At 2 Corinthians 6:14, the King James translators rendered an adjective as a noun, which was apparently necessary for them to do because they did not render the verb as fully as they could have, while also ignoring the meaning of the verb where a different form of the same word was used in the Septuagint. Admittedly, the opening sentence of this verse is very difficult to translate in few words, although it only contains four Greek words. The Greek, may ginesthe heterozugountes apistois, is in the CNT “Do not become yoked together with untrustworthy aliens”. The A.V. has here “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers”, and so many interpret this to be a “religious” admonition: which would have Paul conflict with his own statements, such as those at I Cor. 7:12-14 where he advises people already married to non-believers to make a go of it, and so they make him out to be a liar. This is not a religious statement, as will be evident upon examination of the terms heterozugeo and apistos.

heterozugeo is a verb which appears nowhere else in the N.T., nor in the LXX. However the adjective, heterozugos, does appear in the LXX, at Lev. 19:19, where the A.V. itself has “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind”. The LXX Greek is: taktaynaysou (your cattle) ou katocheuseis (do not let “gender”, and the verb implies the act of sexual intercourse) heterozugo (with a diverse kind, the idea of being “yoked” already being implicit, the English translators did not repeat it). Brenton’s English as it was translated from the Greek varies little from the A.V. English, which was translated from Hebrew. And so while the L&S definition for the verb heterozugeo that appears here in the New Testament follows the A.V.: “to be yoked in unequal partnership” the L&S definition for the adjective heterozugos as it appears in the Septuagint is “coupled with an animal of diverse kind” which with people can only mean “to be coupled with one of another race”, and therefore it is evident that both the A.V. and L&S are attempting to convince us that the verb form of the word somehow has a totally different meaning than the adjective! Here I have in the CNT “yoked together with aliens”, preferring the idea that the verb as it was used by Paul surely bears the same meaning that the adjective did in the Greek scriptures which Paul so often quoted verbatim. This word must also be contrasted with suzugos, used in the N.T. only once, by Paul at Phil. 4:3 and which L&S define “yoked together, paired, suzugoshomauliai wedded union, Aeschylus...as a feminine Substantive, a wife, Euripides; masculine a yoke-fellow, comrade, Iliad, Aristotle.” It is of marriage that Christ used the corresponding verb suzeugnumi (4801) at Matt. 19:6 (Mark 10:9). While su- (see sun, 4862) means “with” or “together”, heteros (2087) means “other” or “other than” or “different”. zugos (2218) is “anything which joins two bodies” (L&S) and is commonly a “yoke” (Matt. 11:29, 30; Acts 15:10; Gal. 5:1; I Tim. 6:1). If Paul wanted to tell us not to be yoked together with the unfaithful, suzugos was the word to use. Rather, he was clearly using heterozugos as it was in the Septuagint, and telling us not to be yoked together with untrustworthy aliens.

Compounding the errors in the A.V. translation of this verse, apistos is an adjective, which L&S define “not to be trusted...not trusty, distrusted, faithless...” yet it is treated in the A.V. as a substantive in this verse, as a noun. The CNT has the word as an adjective, which is what it is. If Paul wanted to use this word as a substantive, a simple article would have cleared up any ambiguity.

With all of this, one may agree that another way to translate this clause from Greek is: “Do not become yoked together with those of other races who are not to be trusted”, which is also a literal translation, and is a message that is consistent with all Scripture.

At 2 Corinthians 6:17, the KJV adds the word thing to the text. The CNT reads this passage thus: “’Come out from the midst of them and be separated,’ says the Prince, and ‘do not be joined to the impure, and I will admit you’.” It is asserted here that “the impure” directly refers to the subject “them” earlier in the passage, and therefore no added words are necessary in order to understand this verse. The KJV translators have added hundreds of words to the New Testament, where in contrast the CNT adds only a handful. With an honest translation, it is rarely necessary to add words to the text in order to capture the meaning of the original Greek.

The Biggest Error of Christian America

Most ministers call Abraham a “Jew” without justification or Scriptural evidence. Preachers refer to Moses and the ancient Israelites who came out of Egypt as “Jews.” Why? It is because they are taught to do so in their colleges and seminaries (controlled by jews). The book of Exodus calls them Israelites, the House of Jacob, Hebrews, Israel, and the children of Israel. Never are any of this race called “Jews.”