What Does Matthew 7:9 Mean in the King James?
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
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
A father’s answer is shaped by the need itself: a request for food is not met with something that cannot nourish.
THE MEANING
You can name what you need without the request becoming a setup for harm. The verse pictures a father recognizing that bread nourishes and refusing a substitute that leaves hunger untouched. Its question assumes that care responds to the actual need.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the fear that asking for what sustains you invites someone you trust to answer with something useless or harmful.
THE ROOT
αἰτέω
aiteō
GROWS FROM
αἰτ-
ait-
to ask or make a request
“ask” in this verse is aiteō. This is the language of placing a request before someone. The verse makes the relationship matter: the son asks for bread, and the father’s answer is measured against that actual need.
ALSO GROWS
aitēma: a request; what is asked for
αἴτημα
The request has a specific object, bread, so the father’s response can be judged by whether it answers the need.
aitēsis: asking; a request
αἴτησις
This related form keeps the focus on a request made to another, the same exchange at the heart of the verse.
λίθος
lithos
GROWS FROM
λιθ-
lith-
stone
The stone’s word family includes both stone material and the act of stoning. That sharpens the contrast: a stone cannot nourish, and in another use it can injure.
ALSO GROWS
lithazō: to stone; to strike with stones
λιθάζω
This branch shows the stone can be an instrument of harm, making the father’s refusal of such a substitute especially plain.
lithinos: made of stone
λίθινος
This branch names what is stone-like and hard, contrasting with bread as food that sustains.
THE PATTERN
A good giver meets a real lack with a fitting good gift.
The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.THE THREAD
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James uses the same Greek verb for asking and pairs it with a giver who responds generously, without reproach. That brings the father-and-son image into focus: the request is not a trap, and the answer meets the lack.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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