"Let" Is Not a False Friend in the KJV

Mark Ward’s handling of the word let is a deliberate attempt to manipulate his audience into accepting a falsehood. This is a textbook case of deceptive framing—where key details are selectively presented, linguistic meaning is distorted, and critical context is omitted to shape a misleading narrative. Ward doesn’t address this supposed “false friend” very often. Apart from a passing reference in an article, I’ve only been able to find a single thirty-second segment devoted to this word in one of Ward’s videos, but the amount of deception that Ward managed to cram into that tiny segment of video is literally mind-blowing.

Here is what Ward said in that short segment:
 
False friend twenty-six on my list of easy false friends is let in II Thessalonians 2:7 and a couple of other passages. Most King James readers with some experience know this one: “He who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way.”
 
The Greek word here means “prevent” or “hinder” or “restrain,” but today, to let someone do something is to permit them to do it, not to prevent them from doing it, to hinder them. But the Oxford English Dictionary has a sense of let that means something similar to what the Greek word does, and sure enough, the OED marks this sense as obsolete. We end up with a special kind of false friend: a word that now means the very opposite of what it once did. Instead of “prevent,” it now means “permit.”
 
And here is the screenshot from the OED that Ward used in his video:

Let’s begin with the information that Ward presented in the screenshot, and we’ll just start at the top of the screen. The first thing to notice about this screenshot is that it doesn’t show us which word Ward actually looked up to find this definition. If we were to search the OED for the word let, we would be presented with sixteen different entries to choose from. Most of those options can be dismissed as having no bearing on the current discussion. For example, we can ignore the suffix -let as well as all the variants of words like late, lead, and light. Discarding options like these leaves us with three entries that should be read to fully understand the word let used in II Thessalonians 2:7. Those three entries are:

A Hidden Homonym
 
Ward’s screenshot was taken from the third entry, and we’ll look at that entry in just a moment, but it is important to note that the OED lists two separate verbs for the word let. These are not just two separate definitions of the same verb. They are two entirely separate words each with multiple definitions listed under their separate entries. In other words, the word let is a homonym. This is not a case of a single word changing its meaning over time. It’s not even a case of a single word having a broader meaning in the past. This is a case where two separate and unrelated words look and sound the same.
 
The word let which means “to suffer, permit, allow” was brought into English from Greek via the German word lâȥan. The word let which means “to hinder, prevent, obstruct” was brought over from the German word lezzan. In Old English the former was spelled lǽtan and the latter was spelled lęttan. The two words look and sound very similar, and they were likely misused for each other so often that they were given the same spelling during the standardization that was introduced in the early days of Modern English.
 
If Ward looked up let in the OED as we know he did, then he must have realized that it is a homonym. Thus, Ward was being just a bit deceitful when he said that “the Oxford English Dictionary has a sense of let that means something similar to what the Greek word does.” What the OED actually says is that the word let which means “hinder” in II Thessalonians 2:7 is an entirely different word than the word let which means “allow.” Ward knew this, but he kept it hidden from his viewers and allowed them to believe that a single word changed its definition so much over time that it eventually came to mean the exact opposite of what it meant originally. This plays into Ward’s claim that the English language has changed so drastically over the past 400 years that the language of the KJV is practically a foreign language to modern readers.
 
A Dubious Definition
 
The next thing to notice about Ward’s screenshot is the number in the top left corner. This definition is marked as definition number two. Why would Ward jump to the second definition of this word instead of the first? Ward showed this screenshot when he said that “the Oxford English Dictionary has a sense of let that means something similar to what the Greek word does, and sure enough, the OED marks this sense as obsolete.” By saying this while showing the above screenshot, Ward was clearly implying that this obsolete sense of the word let is either the only or the best match to the Greek word used in the verse. When we look at the actual entry in the OED, however, we find that neither is true. The definition that Ward showed on his screen is neither the only nor the best match for the Greek word.
 
Here is the definition that Ward skipped over to show his viewers definition number two:

And here is the definition that Ward actually showed in his video:

Ward claimed that “the Greek word here means ‘prevent’ or ‘hinder’ or ‘restrain.’” Which of these two definitions is the best match for that meaning of the Greek word? Is it definition one which uses the words hinder and prevent just like Ward’s definition of the Greek term, or is it definition two which doesn’t share any words at all with his Greek definition? Clearly, no one with an ounce of intelligence could honestly say that the second definition of let is a closer match for the Greek definition. Does that mean that Ward lacks intelligence? Of course not, but it does mean that he is being less than honest with his viewers. There is only one reason I can think of for Ward to have chosen the second definition over the first. He appears to have chosen the definition that is marked obsolete just because it makes his case look stronger.
 
A Transitive Intransitive
 
Those who have been following this series of articles may have recognized a significant difference between the above definitions of let. The first definition is for the transitive form of the verb, and the second definition is for the intransitive form. The difference between transitive and intransitive verbs has come up twice before in this series. My first article in this series addressed Ward’s claim that halt is a false friend in the KJV, and in Ward’s response to that article, he attempted to use the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs to defend his position. I defeated that argument with the following observation:
 
I’m sure it’s not your fault that you have no idea how verbs and participles work. You only have a Ph.D. in New Testament Interpretation after all. It’s not like you’ve studied English grammar. As such, you might be surprised to learn that participles derived from intransitive verbs remain intransitive by nature, because they do not govern an object directly. Thus, the participle “halting” is just as intransitive as the verb from which it comes.
 
Some may think this was a bit harsh, but Ward has attempted to use the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs to intimidate many of his other opponents, and I figured it was time to put him in his place.
 
Shortly after my interaction with Ward regarding the word halt, I wrote my response to his claims regarding the word study, and the issue of transitive and intransitive verbs came up yet again. Here’s what I wrote in that article:
 
I also laughed when I heard Ward threaten, “I am purposely not getting into transitive versus intransitive uses of the word study, though I could. I warn you I could.” I was driving down the interstate when I first heard this part of Ward’s video, and I was sorely tempted to pick up my phone and play this section of the recording back again a few times over. Ward actually believes that his knowledge of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is a threat to those who disagree with him. No, he was not trying some sort of weird joke. Ward actually believes that his opponents are so stupid that they are intimidated by his knowledge of transitive and intransitive verbs.
 
This present article marks the third time that the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs has come up in my dealings with Mark Ward, and I still find myself laughing at his ignorance. The two definitions for let given above include one definition that is marked as transitive and another definition that is marked as intransitive. Ward believes that it is vitally important to only use transitive definitions for transitive verbs and intransitive definitions for intransitive verbs. He looks down his nose in derision at those who fail to maintain this supposedly vital distinction. But notice which of the two definitions Ward used for the transitive verb let in II Thessalonians 2:7. He used the intransitive definition for a transitive verb. Ward knew he was using the wrong definition, but he used it anyway just because it made his claim look better.
 
An Easier Evasion
 
Ward had an easier means of deception available to him, and I’m not sure why he didn’t use it. There is another entry for let in the OED where the definition is given as “to hinder,” the entry is marked obsolete, it is an entry for the transitive verb, and II Thessalonians 2:7 is even included in the examples under this listing. This seems like it would have been a perfect fit for Ward’s claim, and I have no idea why he didn’t use it. Maybe he’s just not very good at what he does.

Here is the entry that Ward should have used to make his case:

This entry fits the Greek word used in the passage, the example from 1535 is Coverdale’s translation of II Thessalonians 2:7 which is essentially the same as the KJV translation, and this entry is marked as obsolete with the last known example being from 1642. Using this entry would have avoided two of my primary objections to Ward’s argument regarding the word let, and I would have been forced to take a different approach. So let’s pretend that Ward actually used this entry to argue for let being a “false friend.”
 
If Ward had used entry 1.e. instead of 2.a., I would have responded by pointing out that entry 1.e. begins with the abbreviation absol. This abbreviation tells us that the entry is referring to a particular grammatical construction in which the object of a transitive verb is implied or understood. That is the case in II Thessalonians 2:7. The direct object of the word letteth is implied or understood; it is not actually written in the sentence. This particular construction where the word let is used as a transitive verb with an understood object is an obsolete construction. This entry in the OED does not tell us that the definition of let is an obsolete definition. It only tells us that the grammatical construction used in II Thessalonians 2:7 is an obsolete construction, and thus, it does not support Ward’s claim that let is a “false friend” in the KJV.
 
A Very Active Archaism
 
At this point, Ward’s defenders (and Ward himself if he still bothers to read my articles) are probably sputtering with halting speech, “But … but … but … even the definition that you give for let is listed as archaic!” And that is correct. The word let meaning “to hinder” is labeled archaic by the OED. However, the noun form of this word is a great example of the difference between the archaic label and the obsolete label. The noun form is derived from the verb, and it is also labeled archaic by the OED. Here is the OED definition of the noun form:

The most recent example listed under this definition is from 1875, and with other words in his list of “false friends,” Ward has often pointed to the date of the last listed example and claimed that this was the last time the word was used anywhere in the world of literature. I imagine that he would do the same with let if he were to get this far in this article, but that would be very foolish of him.
 
The word let was used in this supposedly archaic sense by several notable authors of the twentieth century including Claude McKay whose 1920 poem “Birds of Prey” included the lines:

“They beat us to surrender weak with fright,
And tugging and tearing without let or pause.”
 
Arthur Miller used this form of let in his 1945 book An Air-Conditioned Nightmare in which he wrote: “Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties.” And Robert Heinlein used the same word in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. This is the book famous for coining the word grok as a Martian term which means “to understand profoundly and intuitively.” One of the occurrences of the word grok in Heinlein’s book is accompanied by the word let meaning “a hindrance”: “Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let.” And in 2022, a novel by Geoffrey Charin with the title Without Let or Hindrance was a finalist in the prestigious Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
 
However, the most frequently printed use of this word by far is found in the British passport which adorns its first page with this declaration:
 
“His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.”
 
This sentence has been printed in every British passport issued since 1858, and it has been read by untold thousands of people since then. But this isn’t the only legal use of the word let. It has been used in thousands upon thousands of laws and legal documents in the U.S. as well. For example, it was used in a 1980 opinion from the Alabama Supreme Court in Ford v. Alabama By-Products Corp. It was used in a 1982 opinion from the Virgina Supreme Court in Waskey v. Lewis. It was used in a 1985 opinion from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Morgan v. State. It was used in a 1987 federal opinion from the Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit, in US v. Cintolo. If we jump ahead to more recent rulings, we can see that the word let meaning “a hindrance” was used in a 2007 opinion from the Arkansas Court of Appeals in Loyd v. KAMELI. It was used in a 2018 opinion from the Kentucky Court of Appeals in Dawson v. Boone. And the list goes on and on. The use of the word let to mean “a hindrance” is extremely common in every legal system that uses the English language.
 
But this word is not just used in literature, laws, and court opinions. It’s also used often in the popular press. The NOW Corpus catalogued more than 1,200 uses of the phrase “without let” in recent years, and a large percentage of them use the word let that means “a hindrance.” Here’s a representative sample:

The word let which means “to hinder” in the verb form and “a hindrance” in the noun form is one of the most frequently used archaisms of our day. The modern uses of this supposedly archaic word are so common that they even show up in music like in the song “Without Let or Hindrance” which was released as a single by the band Grand Collapse in 2021. Ward has objected to some of my previous articles by claiming that my examples of these words being used in modern times are just “residual, literary coffee grounds” found in “high literary fiction or challenging academic works that the rest of us don’t even know exist.” He suggested that I should “come down from [my] high literary mountains or step out of [my] literary time machines and back into our linguistic and literary world” and “to remember the plowboy, the man on the street, the man for whom Tyndale died.” I’m not sure how Ward confused any of my previous references with “high literary fiction,” but I would love to see him argue that a song from a hardcore punk band in South Wales fits in that category.
 
Most of this information about the word let can be found in sources that Ward himself frequently cites. The rest, like the song from Grand Collapse, could have been found with a few simple searches on Google. I am not presenting anything in this article that Ward does not know or could not learn with a few clicks of his mouse. Instead of presenting the truth about the word let and helping people understand their Bibles better, Ward intentionally muddied the water by distorting linguistic meanings, omitting critical contexts, and selectively presenting the facts. In short, Ward’s treatment of this word is a classic case of deceptive framing by which he intentionally manipulated his viewers into believing a lie.

Click here to read about more words that are not "false friends" in the KJV.