What Does John 20:13 Mean?

And they said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, Because they have lifted away my Lord, and I do not know where they have placed him.

John 20:13 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

THE KEY

“Taken away” carries the image of lifting: she knows her Lord is removed, yet cannot see where he has been set.

THE MEANING

This verse meets you where grief names a beloved absence as removal: she knows who is missing, yet not where he is laid. The question does not dismiss her tears; her answer makes the loss concrete and leaves its location unknown.

THE ROOT

ἦραν

ēran

GROWS FROM

αἴρω

airō

To lift or raise; by extension, to carry away or remove.

“lifted away” in this verse is ēran. The Greek verb behind “taken away” holds removal and lifting in the same word. Her grief names a real absence, while the verb also carries a motion upward that she cannot yet see.

ALSO GROWS

airei: He lifts or takes away.

αἴρει

This form of the same verb makes its ordinary sense of lifting or removal visible beside the completed taking away she describes.

epairō: Lift up, raise.

ἐπαίρω

This compound retains ⁨αἴρω⁩’s sense of lifting, showing that the word for removal carries more than simple disappearance.

οἶδα

oida

GROWS FROM

εἰδ-

eid-

See; know through seeing.

The Greek form translated “know” belongs to the seeing-family: ⁨οἶδα⁩ carries the sense of having seen, and so knowing. She recognizes her Lord, yet cannot see where he has been laid; recognition and not-knowing remain together.

ALSO GROWS

eidon: I saw.

εἶδον

This form makes the seeing beneath the verb for knowing plain, echoing her uncertainty about where her Lord is.

eidos: Form, appearance.

εἶδος

This related word names what can be seen, sharpening the gap between knowing whom she loves and seeing where he is.

THE PATTERN

Grief speaks from the felt absence while the meaning of that absence remains unseen.

My tears have been my bread day and night, while they say to me all day, Where is your God?

Psalm 42:3 · SDVThe tears give voice to an absence that the speaker cannot resolve, just as Mary names her loss without knowing where her Lord is.

Then when Mary came to where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

John 11:32 · SDVEven as she stands before Jesus, Mary speaks from the loss that his apparent absence has meant to her.

And as they were afraid and leaned their faces toward the ground, the men said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Luke 24:5 · SDVThe women search among the dead because the living one seems absent from the place they expect him.

THE THREAD

The next day John perceived Jesus coming toward him, and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the falling short of the world.

John 1:29 · SDV

The Greek verb ⁨αἴρω⁩ (airō, “lift or remove”) appears in both “taken away” here and “taketh away” in John 1:29. In this verse removal sounds like bereavement; there the same verb names what the Lamb removes from the world.

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