What Does Hebrews 2:15 Mean?
And loosen those who through fear of death were held in slavery throughout all their living.
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
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.THE KEY
Fear of death does not wait until death: it can hold the whole life in bondage.
THE MEANING
Fear of death can occupy the whole span of your life, making living under its shadow feel like bondage. This verse speaks of deliverance as release from that lifelong subjection; death is still named, but its fear no longer owns every day.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that fear of death is only a last-moment fear: it can govern the years before death by turning a whole lifetime into bondage.
THE ROOT
ἀπαλλάξῃ
apallaxē
GROWS FROM
ἀπαλλάσσω
apallassō
To release, set free, or disengage from a binding condition.
“loosen” in this verse is apallaxē. English can make “deliver” sound like rescue from an outside danger; this Greek verb describes release from a binding condition. Here, the fear of death holds people in bondage through life, and deliverance loosens that grip.
ALSO GROWS
apallagē: release, discharge
ἀπαλλαγή
This related noun names release as the result, echoing the verse’s movement out of servitude.
allassō: change, alter
ἀλλάσσω
The shared word family connects release with a change of state; this verse specifies release from fear-driven bondage.
δουλείας
douleias
GROWS FROM
δουλ- (doul-), from δοῦλος (doulos)
Service as a servant; in this verse, servitude that holds a person under its power.
“held in slavery” in this verse is douleias. The Greek word for bondage belongs to the same word family as δοῦλος (doulos), “servant,” and δουλεύω (douleuō), “to serve.” It pictures life pressed into the posture of serving what fear dictates, not just a passing feeling of being trapped.
ALSO GROWS
doulos: servant
δοῦλος
The noun shows bondage as a life held in service, rather than a passing sensation.
douleuō: serve, be in servitude
δουλεύω
The verb shows douleia as an ongoing state of service, matching the verse’s emphasis on an entire lifetime.
THE PATTERN
Fear can make the whole span of life feel like servitude, while release opens a way out of its grip.
I seek the LORD, and he answers me, and snatches me out of every place of dread.From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.So if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.THE THREAD
Since then the children share in common flesh and blood, he likewise shared in those same things with them, so that through death he might make idle the one who held the strength of death, the Slanderer.Both verses use the same Greek word for death, thanatos. Verse 14 names death as the means by which the holder of death’s power is destroyed; verse 15 shows the lifelong bondage created by fear of death.
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