Bible Strands
1 Corinthians 5:6
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Paul addresses the Corinthian church immediately after commanding them to hand a specific offender over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
The words — καύχημα (kauchēma) translates directly to boasting, and οἴδατε (oidate) means know, structuring the verse as a direct rebuke followed by a rhetorical question.
The thread — The leaven metaphor repeats in Galatians 5:9, while the underlying warning about corrupting influence runs through 1 Corinthians 15:33 and James 4:16.
Why it lands — The text states that tolerated sin spreads through the entire community, demanding immediate rejection of complacent approval rather than continued boasting.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
Cross-references
- Galatians 5:9 A little leaven works through the whole batch of dough.
- 1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
- James 4:16 As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil.
- 1 Corinthians 5:2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this?
- Luke 13:21 It is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”
- 1 Corinthians 3:21 Therefore, stop boasting in men. All things are yours,
- 1 Corinthians 4:18 Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you.
- Matthew 13:33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”
- 2 Timothy 2:17 and the talk of such men will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,
- Matthew 16:6 “Watch out!” Jesus told them. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”