What Does Luke 9:14 Mean in the King James?
For they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company.
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 “companies” are not merely crowd-control units: their name comes from reclining, so the multitude is already arranged as diners before the food is handed out.
THE MEANING
A multitude of need becomes people with places at a meal. Here, receiving begins as each group is gathered and seated; the food has not yet been distributed, but the crowd is no longer shapeless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that an overwhelming need makes people impossible to hold in view gives way: each group has a place at the meal.
THE ROOT
κλισίας
klisías
GROWS FROM
κλίνω
klínō
to lean, bend, or recline
The KJV’s “company” translates a word for a group of diners, related to reclining. The verse therefore pictures more than a crowd divided by number: people are arranged in meal-shaped groups, ready to receive together.
ALSO GROWS
kataklinō: to make someone recline at a meal
κατακλίνω
Luke 9:15 uses this related verb when the disciples make the people sit down, carrying the same meal-shaped arrangement into the next verse.
paraklinō: to make someone recline to eat
παρακλίνω
Luke 12:37 uses this related verb when the master seats his servants for a meal, showing the same root in an act of service.
THE PATTERN
A multitude becomes reachable when it is arranged into units that can be held and served.
Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the LORD, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.THE THREAD
Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.The word for “company” here shares the κλίνω (klínō), “recline,” root with the verb translated “make them to sit down to meat.” Here the disciples prepare the crowd for a meal; in Luke 12:37, the master seats and serves the servants.
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