What Does John 7:22 Mean?
Moses therefore gave you the cutting around, not because it is from Moses, but from the fathers, and on the Sabbath you cut around a man.
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
Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man.THE KEY
The accepted Sabbath cut turns the argument back on itself: if a covenant mark may be made that day, healing a whole person cannot be dismissed as Sabbath-breaking.
THE MEANING
Circumcision reaches you through Moses, yet the verse traces its source to the fathers; you perform it even on the Sabbath. That accepted act becomes the comparison point for the charge that a whole man is made well on the same day.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The claim that Sabbath faithfulness excludes every bodily intervention cannot stand beside the accepted Sabbath circumcision named here.
THE ROOT
περιτομήν
peritomēn
GROWS FROM
τεμ-
tem-
Cut; the Greek τέμνω (temnō) family of cutting.
“the cutting around” in this verse is peritomēn. English gives “circumcision” as a settled ritual name, but Greek περιτομή (peritomē, “circumcision”) grows from the family of τέμνω (temnō, “to cut”): it is a cut around. The verse places that accepted cut on the Sabbath, making it the comparison point for the healing that follows.
ALSO GROWS
peritemnō: To cut around; circumcise.
περιτέμνω
This verb shares the cut-root and makes the physical action inside περιτομή explicit.
tomē: A cut; an incision.
τομή
The noun shares the τ and μ consonants in the recognized τεμ-/τομ- stem family, naming the cut itself.
atomos: Uncut; indivisible.
ἄτομος
Built from the same cut-family with a- meaning “not,” it names what is not cut; the verse’s argument moves from a limited cut to a whole person made well.
שַׁבָּת
shabbat
GROWS FROM
שבת
Cease; stop from ordinary work.
The Sabbath word grows from the Hebrew root for ceasing. Here the cessation of ordinary work stands beside an act still performed for the covenant, showing that Sabbath rest and bodily care are not treated as simple opposites.
ALSO GROWS
shāvat: To cease; stop.
שָׁבַת
This verb shares the root consonants and shows the action named by Sabbath.
shabbāton: A Sabbath rest; a solemn cessation.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related form carries the same root into a named period of rest, clarifying the Sabbath’s link to ceasing.
πατέρων
patérōn
GROWS FROM
πατρ-
patr-
Father; ancestor.
The verse distinguishes the immediate giver from the source: Moses transmits a practice whose lineage reaches back to the fathers. The Greek πατήρ (patēr, “father”) family also gives πατριά (patria, “lineage”), placing the practice within an inherited line rather than presenting it as Moses’ invention.
ALSO GROWS
patria: Family line; lineage.
πατριά
It shares the πατρ- consonants and makes the ancestral reach of “the fathers” visible.
patris: Fatherland; homeland.
πατρίς
It shares the same consonantal family, extending father-language into the inherited place of a people.
THE PATTERN
Sabbath cessation makes room for acts of care and life-preserving repair.
Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall stop, that your ox and your donkey may settle, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.Then the Lord answered him, "Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath unbind his ox or his donkey from the trough, and lead it out and water it?"And he said to them, Is it permitted on the sabbath to do good, or to do evil? To deliver a living soul, or to kill? But they held their tongues.THE THREAD
If a man receives the cutting around on the Sabbath, so that the instruction of Moses is not loosened, are you angry with me because I made a man entirely whole on the Sabbath?The next verse makes the comparison explicit: the same Sabbath that permits circumcision is where a whole man is made well. The Greek cut-family in “circumcision” ties the accepted mark directly to the challenge about healing.
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