ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

1 Thessalonians 5.21

Book: 1 Thessalonians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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ASV

19. Quench not the Spirit; 20. despise not prophesyings;

21. prove all things; hold fast that which is good;

  1. abstain from every form of evil. 23. And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-23, ASV)
WEB

19. Don’t quench the Spirit. 20. Don’t despise prophesies.

21. Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.

  1. Abstain from every form of evil. 23. May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-23, WEB)
KJV

19. Quench not the Spirit. 20. Despise not prophesyings.

21. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

  1. Abstain from all appearance of evil. 23. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-23, KJV)
YLT

19. The Spirit quench not; 20. prophesyings despise not;

21. all things prove; that which is good hold fast;

  1. from all appearance of evil abstain ye; 23. and the God of the peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved unblameably in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; (1 Thessalonians 5:19-23, YLT)

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Setting

  • Speaker: Paul, writing with Silvanus (Silas) and Timothy, who are named as co-senders in the opening (1 Thess 1:1).
  • Audience: The church in Thessalonica, capital of the Roman province of Macedonia; a largely Gentile congregation of recent converts (1 Thess 1:9) founded on the second missionary journey (Acts 17:1-9).
  • Location: Written from Corinth, shortly after Timothy returned with news of the young church (1 Thess 3:6).
  • Time period: c. AD 50-51. The Gallio inscription from Delphi fixes Paul in Corinth around AD 51-52 (Acts 18:12), which makes this letter either the earliest or one of the two earliest surviving Pauline writings, roughly twenty years after the crucifixion.

Theological reading

"But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."

The verb is a metals term. Dokimazō means to test in order to approve, and its background is the assaying of coin or ore to establish that it is genuine. It is not the neutral "consider" and not the hostile "criticize"; it is testing with the expectation of keeping what passes. Paul uses it of self-examination before the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:28) and of discerning the will of God (Romans 12:2).

The verse is half of a pair. Verses 19-22 form one instruction: do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything, hold fast the good, abstain from every form of evil. Lifting verse 21 out of that sequence turns a rule about weighing prophecy into a general maxim about open-mindedness. In context Paul is steering between two failures at once, suppressing the Spirit's work and accepting every claimed utterance uncritically, and he refuses both.

The same balance elsewhere. 1 Corinthians 14:29 tells the prophets to speak while the others weigh (diakrinō) what is said; 1 John 4:1 says test the spirits because many false prophets have gone out. Discernment in the New Testament is a congregational competence, not a specialist function, and it presupposes that there is something worth keeping.

See Christian Discernment and G1253 - diakrisis.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

People:

Lexicon:

Passages:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

  • ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
  • WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
  • KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
  • YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.