What Does Matthew 10:21 Mean in the King James?
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
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
Family is not only the setting of this violence; the verb shows it becoming the means by which one person is handed over to death.
THE MEANING
This verse names a rupture in which hostility enters the closest bonds: a brother hands over a brother, a parent hands over a child, and children rise against parents until death follows. It speaks without softening the violence: family ties do not guarantee safety or solidarity. Betrayal can come through the very relationships expected to protect.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that blood ties always make a person safe: kinship itself can become the route through which betrayal and death arrive.
THE ROOT
παραδώσει
paradōsei
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
Give; place something into another’s possession.
“deliver up” in this verse is paradōsei. The verb for handing someone over is built on the word for giving. Here that act of transfer carries a person into lethal danger, making the family bond the channel through which the handover happens.
ALSO GROWS
apodidōmi: give back, repay
ἀποδίδωμι
This branch shows the giving stem in an exchange between parties; here the transfer is a person handed over.
metadidōmi: share, impart
μεταδίδωμι
The same giving family can describe sharing; the verse gives that transfer a devastating direction.
ἐπαναστήσονται
epanastēsontai
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι
histēmi
Stand, set, establish.
“rise up against” in this verse is epanastēsontai. The word for rising against someone belongs to the word-family of standing. Opposition takes the form of a changed stance inside the family: one who is joined by kinship now stands against a parent.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: rise, stand up
ἀνίστημι
This branch keeps the physical image of standing up within the verse’s act of rising.
anthistēmi: stand against, resist
ἀνθίστημι
This branch makes the opposition in the family relationship a literal stance of resistance.
θανατώσουσιν
thanatōsousin
GROWS FROM
θάνατος
thanatos
Death.
The phrase first sends a relative “to death” and ends with the same death-family in “put to death.” The repeated stem ties the handover’s destination to its enacted result: what begins as transfer ends as killing.
ALSO GROWS
thanatos: death
θάνατος
This is the noun naming the destination of the first handover.
athanatos: deathless, immortal
ἀθάνατος
This related form makes the death-family visible across a word for being beyond death.
THE PATTERN
When hostility fractures a household, kinship itself can become the channel of opposition and violence.
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.THE THREAD
For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.Micah names a person’s household as the place their enemies stand. Here that same household fracture becomes a handover to death, from brother to brother and parent to child.
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