What Does Luke 21:5 Mean in the King James?
And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The temple is presented as a carefully ordered world of stone and gifts, yet its beauty cannot make it permanent.
THE MEANING
What appears sacred and secure can still be vulnerable to dismantling: beauty and dedication do not make a human structure permanent. Jesus meets admiration of the temple’s stones and gifts by turning attention toward what can be removed, so the verse speaks now whenever visible grandeur is mistaken for lasting shelter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that visible magnificence or religious dedication proves something is permanent or beyond collapse.
THE ROOT
κεκόσμηται
kekosmētai
GROWS FROM
κοσμ- (kosm-), from κοσμέω (kosmeō)
To arrange or put in order, and by extension to adorn.
“adorned” in this verse is kekosmētai. The verb belongs to the same Greek word family as κόσμος (kosmos), meaning “order” or “world.” The temple’s adornment therefore suggests more than decoration: it appears as a carefully ordered world, though Jesus’ next words show that even this order cannot secure itself.
ALSO GROWS
kosmos: Order, arrangement; world.
κόσμος
The shared word family joins the temple’s ordered beauty to the idea of a whole world made visible.
kosmios: Orderly, respectable, well-arranged.
κόσμιος
This related word shows that the family can describe fitting order as well as ornament.
λίθοις
lithois
GROWS FROM
λιθ- (lith-), from λίθος (lithos)
Stone, including stone used as building material or as an obstacle.
The stones here are admired as the temple’s visible fabric. The same Greek noun later describes people as “living stones,” shifting the image from masonry to living beings as the material of a spiritual house.
ALSO GROWS
lithoi zōntes: Living stones (1 Peter 2:5).
λίθοι ζῶντες
The same noun moves from the admired blocks of a sacred building to people pictured as its living material.
lithos proskommatos: A stone of stumbling (Romans 9:33).
λίθος προσκόμματος
The same stone can be an object of admiration or an obstacle; its role depends on what it does in the scene.
THE PATTERN
What people make beautiful, sacred, or seemingly secure remains vulnerable to being shaken or undone.
As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:THE THREAD
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.The Greek noun translated “stones” here is also used in Peter’s phrase “lively stones.” Luke’s verse points to admired masonry; Peter uses the same word to picture people as the living material of a spiritual house, opening a different image of sacred dwelling.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us