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2 Corinthians 10:3-5 vs. “Take Captive Every Thought (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)”

Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) · checked 2026-09-06

What we checked

Passage2 Corinthians 10:3-5 chapter ↗
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asquotation
Categoryadditions / omissions
AlbumThe Armor of God (Vol. 18) · 2023
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✗Text-faithful
✗Translation named
✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • Verses 3, 4 and 5 all arrive, in order, in the NIV's wording. No line is added, and none is explained or expanded.
  • The clause about the knowledge of God is kept, and the chart gives it a section of its own. It is the clause that names what the arguments are set against.
  • Seeds post the chord chart free, with the words printed on it. Anyone can check this song against a Bible without buying anything first.
  • The reference is easy to find. It sits in the song title, on the album page, in the publisher's own verse index, and in the streaming title.
  • The passage's plural stays plural. Every first-person word in the sung lines is a we, never an I, which is how Paul wrote it.

⚠ Cautions

  • The label names the ESV in four places. The words are the NIV's. Check the song against an NIV, not against the version the label sends you to.
  • The chart prints prevention where the NIV prints pretension. That is what the publisher's printed chart says. It was not checked against the recording.
  • The chorus joins taking captive and making obedient with and. In the NIV the second reads as the aim of the first, not as a second job.
  • The official upload's title gives the reference and no version, and its description names no version either. The ESV label sits elsewhere.

Verse Proof

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the flesh. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, defending his own ministry. Chapter 10 begins his answer to critics there. In verses 1 and 2 he appeals to the mildness and gentleness of Christ, and says he expects to be bold toward people who presume he lives according to the flesh. Verse 10 records what those people said: his letters are weighty, his presence is unimpressive, his speaking is of no account. So the “we” in verses 3 to 5 is Paul and his co-workers. The fight is over who gets believed at Corinth. Verse 5 names what gets demolished. It is arguments, and presumptions set up against the knowledge of God. Verse 6 carries the thought on: the same team is ready to punish disobedience once the church's own obedience is complete.

What the song says, described not quoted

The passage, set for children, with the whole of verses 3 to 5 in one pass. The publisher's free chord chart is the printed record of the words, and it shows the shape.

An intro carries a row of held syllables with no words in them. Verse 1 runs nine lines. It takes verse 3, then verse 4, then the opening of verse 5, in the order the passage gives them. A one-line prechorus carries the clause about the knowledge of God. The chorus is the last clause of verse 5, printed twice. A chorus tag is held syllables again, with no words. The chart then repeats the verse, the chorus and the tag, and closes with a broken-down ending built from the verse's first four lines.

No line is added, no explaining phrase, and no sung reference. Apart from the wording differences set out below, everything the passage did not supply is a held syllable with no word in it.

The order and the content are the passage's. What shifted is the version, and the shift is easy to test, because English Bibles do not agree about the keyword here. In verses 3 and 4 the ESV prints flesh three times. The NIV prints world three times in the same two verses. In its setting of those two verses the chart prints world three times, and the chart never prints flesh. The verbs go the same way. Where the ESV says destroy, in verse 4 and again in verse 5, the NIV says demolish. The chart says demolish. The close of verse 5 is the same story. The ESV takes every thought captive to obey. The NIV takes captive every thought to make it obedient. The song's own title carries the NIV's word order. The ESV is named in four places, all of them Seeds' own. Three name it song by song: the chord chart's credit line, their scripture reference song list, and the Apple Music track title. The fourth is the album page, which gives “Scripture Version: ESV” for the whole record. None of the four is the translation the printed words follow. The chart also parts from the NIV in its own right. It prints prevention where the NIV prints pretension, and that word is not the reading in the ESV, KJV, WEB or BSB either. Its chorus joins the two actions with and where the NIV has to. In the NIV, making the thought obedient reads as the aim of taking it captive. Its weapons line has an extra that, which the NIV does not print. It also drops the For that opens verse 3, and the and that opens verse 5's last clause. The word up ends the verse and opens the prechorus, so the chart prints it twice where the NIV prints it once. Its lines use contractions the NIV spells out, two per pass. All of this is a check of the printed chart, not of the recording.

✎ Departs from the text: The song's words are the NIV's, not the ESV's. Seeds name the ESV in four places of their own, three of them song by song, and one is the chord chart's credit line. The chart's printed lyric also parts from the NIV, most plainly in one swapped word.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

A child sings world here, and the ESV the label names says flesh.

Why it matters

A kids' scripture song is a memory tool. The version named on the label is how a parent knows which Bible to open beside it.

Here that check breaks at the easiest point. A child learns the word world, opens the ESV the label names, and finds the word flesh. Same verse, different keyword, and nothing on the page to explain the gap.

The one swapped word matters for the same reason. A song is sung until it is memorized. That is worth checking on the recording before anyone teaches it.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

The repeated line is the chorus, and the chorus is an action with the singer as the actor. The singer does the taking, and the singer does the making obedient. Sung on a loop, what that plants is a habit: a thought arrives, and you do something about it. The passage says what the checking is against. It is the knowledge of God.

The centre of attention is mixed on a straight count. God is never the subject of a sung sentence. The subjects are we, and the weapons, and the thing that sets itself up. But God is there three times: the power is called divine, the knowledge is God's, and the obedience is to Christ.

That count is worth telling a child about. The chart prints the chorus twice and then repeats it, so the line about us doing the taking arrives four times. The line about divine power sits in the verse, which comes round twice. So say where the power comes from before the chorus teaches the hands to move.

The song also keeps the fight where Paul put it. What gets demolished is an argument set up against the knowledge of God. Not a feeling, and not a person. Colossians 3:16 asks that the word dwell in us richly as we sing. Sing the three verses. Read verses 1, 2 and 10 as well, and you will know who Paul was answering.

Helpful comparison

Seeds' own FAQ predicts this kind of mismatch, but not on this album. It says the majority of their songs are based on the English Standard Version, and that their first five albums, Courage, Faith, Praise, Purpose and Power of Encouragement, are based on an earlier version of the New International Version. The Armor of God is not one of those five. Seeds' own product URL numbers it volume 18.

This site has already checked two songs from that fifth album, and both sing the NIV under an ESV label. This is the same mismatch on a 2023 record.

One part of it is worse here. The chord charts for both of those fifth-album songs credit the NIV in their own copyright lines, and name the 1984 edition. Only the album's product page says ESV. On this chart the credit line itself says ESV, above words that are not the ESV's.

It is not album-wide. Two other songs from The Armor of God are proofed here. “Far More Abundantly” sings the ESV, and “Every Word of God” uses the ESV's verb and differs from it by one word. So the version has to be checked song by song, not by album.

Two run times sit in the record. The album page and Apple Music both give 2:39. The official upload runs 2:41.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

Think we got something wrong? Tell us what and where, and we will check it against the text. Real errors get fixed here, dated, in public. Every correction on the site →

Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Mark 10” Streetlights Mark 10:23-27 Play it freely. This is Mark 10 itself, read word for word in a named translation. The line about all things being possible arrives as the answer to a question about being saved.

✓ The whole chapter, in order, so verse 27 arrives after the rich man’s scene and after the disciples ask who can be saved, instead of standing on its own

⚠ “Word-for-word” here describes the reading, not the translation theory. Streetlights uses it for what is read. Tyndale uses the same phrase for a different thing

 ✓ VERIFIED “Citizens Of Heaven (Philippians 3:20-21)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Philippians 3:20-21 Sing it. It is Philippians 3:20-21 whole and in order, in the ESV, and the publisher's free chord chart names that version on the same page as the words.

✓ Both verses whole and in order. The only words that repeat are words the passage already gave, so nothing new gets memorized as scripture

⚠ The YouTube upload names the reference but not the version. The ESV credit sits on the chord chart, the album page and the song list, so a viewer has to go looking

 ✓ VERIFIED “Breathed Out By God (2 Timothy 3:16-17)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Timothy 3:16-17 Sing it. It is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 whole, in the ESV, and the chord chart names not just the version but the edition, so anyone can check the words against the exact text.

✓ Both verses whole and in order, in the ESV's wording, with every repeated line drawn from the passage itself

✓ no cautions: this is the standard

More songs like this

✎ DEPARTS “Every Word of God (Proverbs 30:5)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Proverbs 30:5 Sing it. It is Proverbs 30:5, and the ESV it names is the version being sung. One word is swapped, all for those, and both words point at the same group.

✓ Both halves of the verse are sung, in the order Proverbs 30:5 gives them. The song adds no sentence of its own.

⚠ One word is not the ESV's. In the shield line the song sings all, where the ESV at Proverbs 30:5 has those. Both words point at the same group.

 ✎ DEPARTS “The Hope That Is In You (1 Peter 3:15 ESV)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 1 Peter 3:15 Sing it. The chart is 1 Peter 3:15 in the ESV, from the command about your heart through to gentleness and respect. Three words are missing. Read the verse beside it once and you have them.

✓ Both ends of the verse are printed. The chart opens on the command about the heart and closes on gentleness and respect, where the ESV's verse 15 ends.

⚠ Three of the verse's words are missing from the chart. The ESV sends the defense to anyone who asks you. The chart drops who asks you.

 ✓ VERIFIED “Citizens Of Heaven (Philippians 3:20-21)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Philippians 3:20-21 Sing it. It is Philippians 3:20-21 whole and in order, in the ESV, and the publisher's free chord chart names that version on the same page as the words.

✓ Both verses whole and in order. The only words that repeat are words the passage already gave, so nothing new gets memorized as scripture

⚠ The YouTube upload names the reference but not the version. The ESV credit sits on the chord chart, the album page and the song list, so a viewer has to go looking

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