The Word Paul Only Used Once

1 Thessalonians 5:27 · Rare or unique word · 2026-09-13

ἐνορκίζω ὑμᾶς τὸν κύριον ἀναγνωσθῆναι τὴν ἐπιστολὴν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς

I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.

Reading 'I charge you' in English, you might picture Paul giving a firm but ordinary instruction, one command among many in the letter's closing lines.

The verb is enorkizo (en-or-KID-zo), built from the word for 'oath' (horkos). It doesn't just mean 'command' — it means to put someone under oath, to bind them by invoking a solemn witness. Paul uses it nowhere else in his surviving letters. Every other time he wants obedience, he asks, urges, commands, exhorts. Here, and only here, he swears the Thessalonians in — 'I adjure you by the Lord.' It's the language of the courtroom or the altar, not the letter-closing.

This single word tells us how much weight Paul is putting on one specific request: that the letter be read to all the brothers. He isn't merely hoping this happens — he is invoking the Lord himself as the guarantor that it will. The rarity is the point. A word this strong, used this once, signals that something Paul considers non-negotiable is at stake: the whole church, without exception, must hear what he has written.

Why would a letter's public reading require an oath? Because Paul believed the words he'd just dictated carried the authority of the Lord who sent him — and a Lord who speaks does not intend to be overheard by a few. The oath exposes Paul's conviction that Scripture is not private property but a word meant for the whole gathered body. God is the kind of God who wants every voice in the room to hear him, and who binds his messenger to make sure of it. Worship rises not from the vocabulary alone but from what the vocabulary reveals: a Lord jealous that no member of his family be left outside the reading.

Today

Read this chapter of 1 Thessalonians aloud today with at least one other person present — not silently, not alone — as a small act of honoring the oath Paul swore.