What Does John 10:31 Mean?
So the Jews lifted stones again to stone him.
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
Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.THE KEY
The verb for taking up the stones is the same Greek verb John later uses for Jesus bearing the cross.
THE MEANING
A crowd answers a claim of oneness by lifting stones, and “again” makes the threat a returning response. The stones turn a dispute into bodily danger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence becomes faithful when it claims to defend God. Here, certainty takes the form of stones lifted against another person.
THE ROOT
ἐβάστασαν
ebastasan
GROWS FROM
βαστάζω
bastazō
to carry, bear, or take up
The Greek verb ἐβάστασαν (ebastasan, “they carried” or “took up”) holds the weight of what is being lifted. John uses this same verb for Jesus bearing the cross, while Galatians uses it for carrying one another’s burdens: the root links violence, suffering, and support through the act of carrying.
ALSO GROWS
bastazete: bear or carry
βαστάζετε
The same verb describes carrying one another’s burdens, showing that carrying can mean support as well as threat.
bastazōn: bearing or carrying
βαστάζων
John uses this form for Jesus bearing his cross, linking the stones lifted here with the weight he later carries.
THE PATTERN
A perceived offense against God can turn communal certainty into punishment by stones.
Then they lifted stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the middle of them, and so passed by.And whoever pierces the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the assembly shall certainly stone him. The sojourner as well as the native of the land, when he pierces the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.And they stoned Stephen, calling out and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my breath.THE THREAD
And carrying his cross, he went out to the place called the place of a skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.John uses the same verb here for the crowd taking up stones and later for Jesus bearing his cross. The shared word places the crowd’s lifted weight beside the weight Jesus carries into execution.
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