What Does John 2:19 Mean?
Jesus answered and said to them, Unbind this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
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
Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.THE KEY
The Greek command translated “Destroy” is the same word Jesus later uses to say “Loose him”, one verb holds demolition and unbinding together.
THE MEANING
The temple is Jesus’ body, as the next verse makes clear. He speaks of its bodily destruction and its raising in the same sentence: “I will raise it up.” The verse meets you with a body that is vulnerable to violence, yet whose final outcome belongs to the one who raises it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that violence has the final claim over Jesus’ body.
THE ROOT
λύσατε
lysate
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, untie, or release; also to dissolve, break up, or destroy.
“Unbind” in this verse is lysate. English gives you the hard force of “destroy,” while λύω (lyō) also carries the sense of loosening or unbinding. John uses the exact same form, λύσατε (lysate), when Jesus says “Loose him” in John 11:44, letting destruction and release sound through one verb without softening the violence of this verse.
ALSO GROWS
lyō: Loosen, untie, release.
λύω
John uses this same verb in John 11:44 as λύσατε (lysate, “Loose him”), when Jesus commands Lazarus’s bindings to be undone.
apolyō: Release, dismiss, send away.
ἀπολύω
This compound carries the same loosening root into the act of releasing someone, keeping that sense audible beside “Destroy” here.
THE PATTERN
A body given over to death remains within God’s power to raise.
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before his face.But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.THE THREAD
The one who had died came out, his hands and feet bound in strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped his face. Jesus said to them, Untie him, and let him go.“Loose him” translates the same Greek command, λύσατε (lysate), rendered “Destroy” in John 2:19. The shared word links the tearing down of the temple with the unbinding of a man emerging from the tomb.
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