“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” (Philippians 4:6 , KJV)
What is this talking about? Be careful for nothing? Are we being told to throw caution to the wind….to maybe be careless?
Hopefully this post will be helpful, to shed some light on some old English.
This word, in the Greek, μεριμνάω means “to be apprehensive, have anxiety, be anxious, be (unduly) concerned.”
Notice the Lexicon entry from Logos Bible Software:
So why did the KJV translators tell us to be careful for nothing? Well, in their 1611 Elizabethan English, what they translated exactly what the Greek said using an archaic form of the word careful as indicated by the Oxford English Dictionary:
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “careful (adj.), sense 2,” September 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2204509862.
This matches precisely what the Legacy Standard Bible has:
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
What a blessing it is to have the Bible in our language…..the language of the plow boy! The common man (that’s me) can read the Bible and study it, May we be faithful to share it with others!
A very good and applicable explanation. Thank you brother