What Does Luke 9:38 Mean in the King James?
And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child.
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 Greek word monogenēs holds both the father’s only child and the child’s singular place in his family in a single word.
THE MEANING
The father asks for his son to be seen and names him as his only child. The plea keeps the need bound to this one relationship, not an abstraction.
THE ROOT
μονογενής
monogenēs
GROWS FROM
μόνος + γένος (compound)
μόνος (monos) means only or alone; γένος (genos) means kind, family, stock, or offspring. Together they describe the one child in a family.
“only child” in this verse is monogenēs. The word holds singularity and kinship together: this is the father’s one child, whose distress is inseparable from their bond. Here the father’s brief phrase carries the full weight of whom he is pleading for.
ALSO GROWS
monos: only, alone
μόνος
It marks the child’s singular place in the father’s family.
genos: kind, family, stock, offspring
γένος
It ties that singularity to the child’s place within a family.
THE PATTERN
When scripture names a child as a parent’s only one, it makes the relationship inseparable from what is at stake.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people thronged him.THE THREAD
For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people thronged him.Luke uses the same word, monogenēs, for Jairus’s only daughter. The echo makes “only child” more than a family detail: in both pleas, the child’s singular place in a parent’s life is carried into the appeal.
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