What Does Matthew 25:27 Mean in the King James?
Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
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 word for “usury” also means offspring: the verse pictures entrusted value as something capable of giving birth to more.
THE MEANING
Here, fear cannot make entrusted value inert in the explanation: even the servant’s own account leaves a path for it to produce a return. The verse exposes the distance between calling the master severe and taking no step that might have yielded anything.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that fear makes inaction neutral; the servant’s own reasoning shows that leaving the money unused still has a cost.
THE ROOT
τόκος
tokos
GROWS FROM
τικ-/τεκ- (from τίκτω)
To bear, bring forth, or give birth.
“usury” in this verse is tokos. The word τόκος means both interest and offspring, and comes from τίκτω, “to bear.” The verse therefore pictures interest as money’s offspring: what is entrusted can bring forth something beyond its original measure.
ALSO GROWS
tiktō: To bear or give birth.
τίκτω
It is the verb behind τόκος, revealing the image of a return as something brought forth.
teknon: Child or offspring.
τέκνον
This related word carries the same birth image, making the verse’s financial return sound like generation.
THE PATTERN
What is received carries the possibility of bringing forth more when it is put into motion.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.THE THREAD
Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?Luke’s parallel uses the same word, τόκος (tokos), for “usury,” preserving the image of a return as offspring. That shared word makes the expectation more than bookkeeping: the entrusted amount is meant to bring forth beyond itself.
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