What Does Ephesians 3:14 Mean?
For this cause I bend my knees toward the Father of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,THE KEY
In Greek, “Father” and “family” share one root, so the one addressed here is also the source of belonging named in the next verse.
THE MEANING
The verse gives address a bodily form: your knees bend toward the Father. It places that relation beside Jesus, whose name carries deliverance, and the anointed one.
THE ROOT
πατέρα
patéra
GROWS FROM
πατρ-
patr-
Father, parent, source
English gives “Father” and “family” unrelated word-shapes, while Greek links πατήρ (patēr, “father”) and πατριά (patriá, “family, lineage”) through πατρ- (patr-, “father, source”). The next verse continues the same seed, so the address widens into the source-name of belonging.
ALSO GROWS
patriá: family, lineage
πατριά
Ephesians 3:15 uses this form for “family,” binding those named to the same father-source stem.
patrōos: ancestral, belonging to one’s fathers
πατρῷος
The same stem reaches what is ancestral, showing how fatherhood can name a source from which identity and inheritance extend.
κάμπτω
kamptō
GROWS FROM
καμπ-
kamp-
Bend, curve, bring into a bent posture
“bend my knees” in this verse is kamptō. This verb names the body’s bend, and the same stem recurs in the universal knee-bowing of Philippians 2:10 and Romans 14:11. The verse holds a personal act of prayer inside a wider image of recognition.
ALSO GROWS
kampsē: should bend, should bow
κάμψῃ
Philippians 2:10 uses this form for every knee, carrying the same bodily movement into a universal scene.
kampsei: will bend, will bow
κάμψει
Romans 14:11 repeats the verb for every knee, extending the image beyond one person’s posture.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
Deliver, bring out of narrowness into spaciousness
The Greek name Ἰησοῦ (Iēsou, “Jesus”) carries the Hebrew name יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua, “deliverance”), from יָשַׁע (yasha, “deliver, bring into spaciousness”). The title Χριστός (Christos, “anointed one”) names an identity beside that deliverance.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuʿah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun carries the name’s deliverance sense as the act or state of being brought out.
moshiaʿ: deliverer, one who brings out
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This form names the one who brings out, showing the name’s action as nature.
THE PATTERN
Bending the knees gives bodily form to recognition directed toward God.
Now when Daniel perceived that the writing had been inscribed, he went into his house, and with his windows open in his upper room toward Jerusalem, he knelt on his knees three times in the day, and prayed, and extended his hands in thanks before his God, as he had done from before.And he was pulled away from them about a stone's cast, and set his knees down, and prayed,That at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of things in heaven, and things on the earth, and things under the earth.THE THREAD
From whom every lineage in the heavens and on the earth is named.English moves from “Father” to “family,” while Greek carries πατέρα (patéra, “Father”) into πατριά (patriá, “family, lineage”), with the shared πατρ- (patr-, “father, source”) stem. The next verse opens the address into a wider belonging: every family bears the name of the same source.
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