What Does Matthew 10:10 Mean in the King James?
Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.
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 worker is worthy of nourishment itself, so traveling without supplies does not make provision an afterthought.
THE MEANING
The verse presents a journey without packed supplies and still calls its worker worthy of nourishment. Work and food belong together: the worker is worthy of what sustains them. Provision can meet the work through the people who receive it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief this verse undoes is that being sent without supplies means you are undeserving of support; it names the worker as worthy of nourishment even on the road.
THE ROOT
τροφῆς
trophēs
GROWS FROM
τρέφω (trephō), τρεφ-
Nourish, feed, rear; the word for food names what nourishes and sustains.
The KJV’s “meat” means food here, but τροφή (trophē, food or nourishment) names food through what it does: it feeds and sustains a living body. The worker’s food is presented as part of the work’s sustenance, not an unrelated extra.
ALSO GROWS
trephō: To nourish, feed, or rear.
τρέφω
This verb shows the food here as what sustains a life, not simply a ration.
trophos: A nurse or caregiver who nourishes and rears.
τροφός
The same word family reaches the person who feeds; nourishment is an act of sustaining as well as something carried.
ἐργάτης
ergatēs
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
Work, deed, productive action.
ἐργάτης (ergatēs, worker) belongs to the same work-family as ἔργον (ergon, work or deed) and ἐργάζομαι (ergazomai, to work or produce). English can make “workman” sound like a role detached from its labor; Greek keeps the worker bound to the work, then places that worker beside their nourishment.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: Work or deed.
ἔργον
The worker is named through the work itself, not as someone separate from it.
ergazomai: To work, labor, or produce.
ἐργάζομαι
The worker’s identity is tied to active labor, which the verse places alongside the food that sustains it.
synergos: A fellow-worker or co-worker.
συνεργός
The same work-root can describe shared labor, opening the verse’s provision beyond solitary self-sufficiency.
THE PATTERN
Those who labor may partake of the sustenance their labor serves.
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house.For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.THE THREAD
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?The word translated “meat” in both verses is τροφή (trophē), meaning food or nourishment. Matthew 10:10 ties nourishment to the worker’s labor; Matthew 6:25 places food beside the larger realities of life and body, showing what that nourishment sustains.
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