What Does Matthew 25:39 Mean in the King James?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
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 guarded place is not outside the range of encounter: the question turns confinement into a place where the king is already being met.
THE MEANING
The question exposes how easily someone can be present among suffering without recognizing the person before them. Illness and confinement remain places where an encounter occurs, even when its meaning is not yet understood.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that meeting the king happens apart from meeting people in illness or confinement.
THE ROOT
φυλακῇ
phylakē
GROWS FROM
φυλακ- / φυλασσ-
To guard or keep watch; φυλακή can mean a watch or guarded place, and also a prison.
The word for prison belongs to the language of guarding and watching. The question crosses that guarded boundary: confinement does not prevent someone from coming to the person held there.
ALSO GROWS
phylassō: To guard, keep, or watch over.
φυλάσσω
This related verb makes the guarding inside φυλακή audible; the imprisoned person is still someone who can be approached.
phylax: A guard or watchman.
φύλαξ
The guarded place does not erase the person within it, and the question centers the act of coming to them.
ἠσθενημένον
ēsthenēmenon
GROWS FROM
ἀσθεν-
Weakness or lack of strength.
The word translated sick names diminished strength, not a person’s identity or worth. Beside φυλακή, it places bodily weakness and guarded confinement together as conditions that restrict freedom, yet neither makes coming near impossible.
ALSO GROWS
asthenēs: Weak or without strength.
ἀσθενής
It shows the condition as a state of weakness rather than a definition of the person.
astheneia: Weakness or illness.
ἀσθένεια
The same word family names bodily vulnerability, one of the settings in which the question locates encounter.
THE PATTERN
Seeing another’s distress becomes recognition when presence crosses the distance to them.
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.THE THREAD
But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,Acts uses the same word, φυλακή, for a prison whose doors open and whose prisoners are brought out. Matthew’s question focuses on coming to the person inside before any exit; the shared word holds confinement and release close.
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