What Does John 8:5 Mean?
Now in the instruction Moses commanded us to stone such women. But what do you say?
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
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?THE KEY
The Greek word for “stoned” makes the proposed violence part of the question itself: the stone is already becoming an act.
THE MEANING
A person stands at the center of a demand for lethal judgment. Citing a command does not make the question neutral: the answer is being pressed toward a specific act, the casting of stones. The verse shows how a rule can be made to carry a decision someone is still asking another to authorize.
THE ROOT
λιθάζειν
lithazein
GROWS FROM
λιθ-
λιθ- (lith-, stone): the Greek stem shared by the word for stone and the verb for stoning.
The Greek moves from stone as an object to stoning as an action through the same stem. English can make “stone” and “stone someone” feel like separate ideas; the shared root holds the instrument and the violence together.
ALSO GROWS
lithos: stone
λίθος
This is the object named by the shared λιθ- stem, the very thing the question proposes to use.
lithazō: to stone, to throw stones at
λιθάζω
This is the verb behind λιθάζειν in the verse; the proposed sentence already contains the act of using stones against a person.
lithoboleō: to throw stones at, stone
λιθοβολέω
This compound keeps λιθ- for stone and joins it to the act of throwing, making explicit the movement from object to violence.
THE PATTERN
A judgment pronounced against another can reveal the measure its speaker is willing to impose.
And when they stayed on asking him, he straightened up and said to them, The one among you who has not missed the mark, let him first throw a stone at her.For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you.And David's anger burned hot against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deed shall surely die.THE THREAD
And when they stayed on asking him, he straightened up and said to them, The one among you who has not missed the mark, let him first throw a stone at her.The verse’s λιθάζειν (lithazein, to stone) and the next verse’s λίθον (lithon, stone) share the Greek λιθ- root. The next line puts the stone into a person’s hand and makes the one who will cast it part of the question.
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