What Does Matthew 2:20 Mean in the King James?
Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.
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 return becomes possible when the ones hunting the child’s living soul have themselves reached death.
THE MEANING
A threat around you is real, but it is not identical with its outcome: the child is alive, and the pursuit has ended. The verse gives return a concrete condition, the force seeking that life no longer holds power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that being hunted means life is already lost. The verse separates the threat from its outcome: the child remains alive after the pursuers have died.
THE ROOT
ψυχήν
psychēn
GROWS FROM
ψυχ
psych-
The living soul: the life and person as a living self.
English “life” can sound like a thing possessed, while ψυχή names the living soul whose whole existence is at stake. Its word family ranges from ψυχικός, “of the living soul,” to ἄψυχος, “lifeless,” so the threat is against a person, not an abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
psychikos: Natural; pertaining to the living soul.
ψυχικός
It shows ψυχή describing the living self as a whole dimension of a person.
apsychos: Lifeless; without life.
ἄψυχος
It names the stark condition the threat seeks to bring about, while the child remains alive.
τεθνήκασιν
tethnēkasin
GROWS FROM
θνῃσκ
thnēsk-
To die; to reach death.
“dead” in this verse is tethnēkasin. The Greek form is perfect: the seekers have died, and their death stands as the present fact on which the command to return rests. The verse makes the end of a lethal pursuit concrete without softening why the child had to flee.
ALSO GROWS
apothnēskō: To die; to perish.
ἀποθνῄσκω
This compound keeps the root’s direct sense of dying and makes the pursuers’ condition explicit.
thnētos: Mortal; subject to death.
θνητός
It places the pursuers’ death within the larger condition of mortal life.
THE PATTERN
A life under lethal pursuit can return to its path when that pursuit ends.
And the LORD said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life.Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.THE THREAD
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.Both verses use ψυχή (psychē, living soul) for “life.” Here it is the child’s life under lethal pursuit; there, the same living self appears in a losing-and-finding reversal, showing that the word reaches beyond mere survival.
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