What Does Luke 1:18 Mean?
And Zacharias said to the messenger, By what will I perceive this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in her days.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.THE KEY
The question is not what the promise says, but how it can become knowable when the body appears to contradict it.
THE MEANING
This verse names the gap between a word you hear and what your body tells you is possible. You ask how you can know, and point to age, your own and another’s, as the evidence that seems to settle the matter.
THE ROOT
γνώσομαι
gnōsomai
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω (ginōskō), Greek stem γινωσκ-
To know, recognize, or come to know through experience.
“By what will I perceive this” in this verse is gnōsomai. Zacharias does not ask what the announcement means; he asks how it can become something he knows. The verb’s sense of knowing through recognition sharpens the question: how can this promise be encountered as real when his present bodily evidence points the other way?
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: knowledge
γνῶσις
This noun names knowing itself, bringing the verse’s focus into view: how knowledge of the promise will become possible.
gnōstos: known, familiar
γνωστός
The contrast between an unconfirmed promise and what is already familiar through bodily experience sharpens Zacharias’s question.
THE PATTERN
When a promise outruns visible evidence, the hearer asks for a sign that will make it knowable.
And he said, Lord GOD, by what will I know that I will take hold of it?And he said to him, If now I have found favor in your eyes, then make me a sign that you speak with me.The other disciples therefore said to him, We have perceived the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I perceive in his hands the mark of the nails, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not lean my full weight.THE THREAD
And he said, Lord GOD, by what will I know that I will take hold of it?Genesis gives the same question in the same words: “whereby shall I know?” In both verses, a promise exceeds present evidence, and the speaker asks for a way to know it as real.
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