2 Corinthians 6:14
New International Version
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

New Living Translation
Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness?

English Standard Version
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

Berean Standard Bible
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

Berean Literal Bible
Do not become unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

King James Bible
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

New King James Version
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?

New American Standard Bible
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers; for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together, or what does light have in common with darkness?

NASB 1995
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?

NASB 1977
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?

Legacy Standard Bible
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?

Amplified Bible
Do not be unequally bound together with unbelievers [do not make mismatched alliances with them, inconsistent with your faith]. For what partnership can righteousness have with lawlessness? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

Christian Standard Bible
Do not be yoked together with those who do not believe. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

Holman Christian Standard Bible
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

American Standard Version
Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness?

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
Do not be associates with those who are unbelievers; for what partnership has righteousness with evil, or what intimacy has light with darkness?

Contemporary English Version
Stay away from people who are not followers of the Lord! Can someone who is good get along with someone who is evil? Are light and darkness the same?

Douay-Rheims Bible
Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness?

English Revised Version
Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness?

GOD'S WORD® Translation
Stop forming inappropriate relationships with unbelievers. Can right and wrong be partners? Can light have anything in common with darkness?

Good News Translation
Do not try to work together as equals with unbelievers, for it cannot be done. How can right and wrong be partners? How can light and darkness live together?

International Standard Version
Stop becoming unevenly yoked with unbelievers. What partnership can righteousness have with lawlessness? What fellowship can light have with darkness?

Literal Standard Version
Do not become yoked with others—unbelievers, for what partaking [is there] to righteousness and lawlessness?

Majority Standard Bible
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

New American Bible
Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

NET Bible
Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

New Revised Standard Version
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?

New Heart English Bible
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

Webster's Bible Translation
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

Weymouth New Testament
Do not come into close association with unbelievers, like oxen yoked with asses. For what is there in common between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what partnership has light with darkness?

World English Bible
Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

Young's Literal Translation
Become not yoked with others -- unbelievers, for what partaking is there to righteousness and lawlessness?

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Do Not Be Unequally Yoked
13As a fair exchange, I ask you as my children: Open wide your hearts also. 14Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? 15What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?…

Cross References
Genesis 24:3
and I will have you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I am dwelling,

Deuteronomy 22:10
Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.

Ezra 9:2
Indeed, the Israelites have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed has been mixed with the people of the land. And the leaders and officials have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness!"

1 Corinthians 5:9
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

1 Corinthians 6:6
Instead, one brother goes to law against another, and this in front of unbelievers!

1 Corinthians 7:39
A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, as long as he belongs to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:7
Therefore do not be partakers with them.


Treasury of Scripture

Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion has light with darkness?

unequally.

Exodus 34:16
And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Leviticus 19:19
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Deuteronomy 7:2,3
And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: …

for.

1 Samuel 5:2,3
When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon…

1 Kings 18:21
And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

2 Chronicles 19:2
And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD.

and what.

Proverbs 8:18,19
Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness…

Romans 13:12-14
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light…

Ephesians 4:17-20
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, …

Jump to Previous
Asses Bound Close Common Communion Company Dark Darkness Evil Faith Fellowship Iniquity Light Others Oxen Partaking Partnership Righteousness Together Unbelievers Unrighteousness Wickedness Yoked
Jump to Next
Asses Bound Close Common Communion Company Dark Darkness Evil Faith Fellowship Iniquity Light Others Oxen Partaking Partnership Righteousness Together Unbelievers Unrighteousness Wickedness Yoked
2 Corinthians 6
1. That he has approved himself a faithful minister of Christ by his exhortations,
3. and by integrity of life,
4. and by patiently enduring all kinds of affliction and disgrace for the gospel.
10. Of which he speaks the more boldly amongst them because his heart is open to them,
13. and he expects the like affection from them again;
14. exhorting them to flee the society and pollutions of idolaters,
17. as being themselves temples of the living God.














(14) Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.--We seem at first to enter, by an abrupt transition, upon a new line of exhortation. The under-current of thought is, however, not difficult to trace. There was a false latitude as well as a true. The baser party at Corinth might think it a matter of indifference whether they married a heathen or a Christian, whether they chose their intimate friends among the worshippers of Aphrodite or of Christ. Against that "enlargement" the Apostle feels bound to protest. The Greek word for "unequally yoked together" is not found elsewhere, and was probably coined by St. Paul to give expression to his thoughts. Its meaning is, however, determined by the use of the cognate noun in Leviticus 19:19 ("Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind"). Cattle were unequally yoked together when ox and ass were drawing the same plough (Deuteronomy 22:10). Men and women are so when they have no common bond of faith in God. Another explanation refers the image to the yoke of a balance, or pair of scales, and so sees in the precept a warning against partiality in judgment; but this rests on very slender ground, or rather, no ground at all.

Verse 14. - Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Ewald, followed by Dean Stanley, Holsten, and others, thinks that here there is a sudden dislocation of the argument, and some have even supposed that the section, 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, is either an after thought written by the apostle on the margin of the Epistle after it was finished; or even an interpolation. The latter view has arisen from the unusual expressions of the section, and the use of the word "Belial," and the command of Greek shown by the varied expressions. There is no adequate ground for these conjectures. Every writer is conscious of moods in which words come to him more fluently than at other times, and all writers of deep feeling, like St. Paul, abound in sudden transitions which correspond to the lightning-like rapidity of their thoughts. It is doubtful whether the readers would not have seen at once the sequence of thought, which depends on circumstances which we can only conjecture. Probably the alienation from St. Paul had its root in some tampering with unbelievers. Such might at any rate have been the case among the Gentile members of the Church, some of whom were even willing to go to sacrificial feasts in heathen temples (1 Corinthians 8-10.). "Unequally yoked" is a metaphor derived from Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:10, and is the opposite of "true yoke fellow" (Philippians 4:3). What fellowship; literally, participation (Ephesians 5:6-11). Unrighteousness; literally, lawlessness (1 John 3:4). It was a special mark of heathen life (Romans 7:19). Light with darkness. This antithesis is specially prominent in Ephesians 5:9-11 and Colossians 1:12, 13, and in the writings of St. John (John 1:5; John 3:19; 1 John, passim).

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
{Do} not
Μὴ (Mē)
Adverb
Strong's 3361: Not, lest. A primary particle of qualified negation; not, lest; also (whereas ou expects an affirmative one) whether.

be
γίνεσθε (ginesthe)
Verb - Present Imperative Middle or Passive - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 1096: A prolongation and middle voice form of a primary verb; to cause to be, i.e. to become, used with great latitude.

unequally yoked
ἑτεροζυγοῦντες (heterozygountes)
Verb - Present Participle Active - Nominative Masculine Plural
Strong's 2086: To be yoked up differently, to be unequally yoked. From a compound of heteros and zugos; to yoke up differently, i.e. to associate discordantly.

with unbelievers.
ἀπίστοις (apistois)
Adjective - Dative Masculine Plural
Strong's 571: (passively) untrustworthy (person), or incredible (thing).

For
γὰρ (gar)
Conjunction
Strong's 1063: For. A primary particle; properly, assigning a reason.

what
τίς (tis)
Interrogative / Indefinite Pronoun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 5101: Who, which, what, why. Probably emphatic of tis; an interrogative pronoun, who, which or what.

partnership [can]
μετοχὴ (metochē)
Noun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3352: Sharing, partnership, fellowship. From metecho; participation, i.e. Intercourse.

righteousness
δικαιοσύνῃ (dikaiosynē)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 1343: From dikaios; equity; specially justification.

[have with]
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

wickedness?
ἀνομίᾳ (anomia)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 458: Lawlessness, iniquity, disobedience, sin. From anomos; illegality, i.e. Violation of law or wickedness.

Or
(ē)
Conjunction
Strong's 2228: Or, than. A primary particle of distinction between two connected terms; disjunctive, or; comparative, than.

what
τίς (tis)
Interrogative / Indefinite Pronoun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 5101: Who, which, what, why. Probably emphatic of tis; an interrogative pronoun, who, which or what.

fellowship
κοινωνία (koinōnia)
Noun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2842: From koinonos; partnership, i.e. participation, or intercourse, or benefaction.

[does] light [have]
φωτὶ (phōti)
Noun - Dative Neuter Singular
Strong's 5457: Light, a source of light, radiance. From an obsolete phao; luminousness.

with
πρὸς (pros)
Preposition
Strong's 4314: To, towards, with. A strengthened form of pro; a preposition of direction; forward to, i.e. Toward.

darkness?
σκότος (skotos)
Noun - Accusative Neuter Singular
Strong's 4655: Darkness, either physical or moral. From the base of skia; shadiness, i.e. Obscurity.


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NT Letters: 2 Corinthians 6:14 Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Cor. 2C iiC 2Cor ii cor iicor)
2 Corinthians 6:13
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