Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"He who now letteth" in 2 Thessalonians means he who currently allows
"Let" in 1611 could mean the opposite of its modern sense: to hinder or restrain, not to permit.
2 Thessalonians 2:7, in every translation this tool compares.
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way" (2 Thessalonians 2:7, KJV). Read with the modern meaning of "let" (to allow), the verse seems to say a restraining figure is currently permitting something. The actual, now-archaic sense of "let" here is closer to the opposite: to hinder, delay, or restrain, a meaning otherwise preserved today only in the tennis and racquet-sports term "let" (a serve that's blocked and replayed) and the legal phrase "without let or hindrance."
It's one of the sharper examples of a King James word whose meaning has drifted, precisely because the old and new meanings aren't just different: they point in opposite directions, so a modern reader gets not just confused but actively misled toward the reverse of the intended sense. Modern translations sidestep the whole problem, rendering this verse with words like "restrains" or "holds back" instead.
