What Does John 20:6 Mean?
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen wrappings lying.
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 cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,THE KEY
Peter enters a place whose Greek name means “memorial,” but what lies there is the burial linen without the body it was meant to recall.
THE MEANING
You can enter the place you expect to preserve the ending and find the linen still there while the body is absent. What remains marks that death was real, yet the burial wrapping no longer contains the one it wrapped.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The burial cloths are not proof that the buried one remains held by the grave.
THE ROOT
μνημεῖον
mnēmeion
GROWS FROM
μνημ-
mnēm-
memory, remembrance
The Greek word for a tomb belongs to the language of remembering: it is a memorial place. Here, Peter sees the place of remembrance, but the linen remains without the one it was meant to mark.
ALSO GROWS
mnēmē: Memory or remembrance.
μνήμη
The sepulchre is named from this field of remembering, making the empty place itself part of what Peter sees.
mnēmoneuō: To remember or call something to mind.
μνημονεύω
The tomb holds a memory of the body’s burial, while the linen makes that burial visible in the present.
ὀθόνια
othonia
GROWS FROM
ὀθον-
othon-
linen cloth, linen sheet
“linen wrappings” in this verse is othonia. The word names linen cloths, the material used to wrap the body for burial. The cloth remains as a trace of the burial, while its presence without the body shows that the wrapping no longer encloses him.
ALSO GROWS
othonē: A linen sheet or cloth.
ὀθόνη
This related word shows the linen belongs to a broader cloth vocabulary, not to ordinary clothing alone.
othonion: A linen cloth; the singular form related to the word used here.
ὀθόνιον
The same linen word appears in the burial account, connecting the cloth Peter sees with the wrapping laid around Jesus.
THE PATTERN
In the Gospel accounts, burial cloths show whether death still binds the body or the body has left its wrapping behind.
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.And the head-cloth, which had been on his head, was not lying with the linen wrappings, but was rolled up in a place by itself.Then Peter stood up and ran to the tomb, and bending low, he peered in and saw the linen wrappings lying by themselves; and he went away, wondering in himself at what had happened.THE THREAD
Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury.This earlier verse uses the same Greek word for the linen clothes as John 20:6. The cloth Peter sees at the tomb is the very burial wrapping that had enclosed Jesus’ body.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us