What Does Luke 10:12 Mean?
But I say to you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that city.
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
But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.THE KEY
“More tolerable” means more bearable: Sodom is not the heaviest measure of what refusal can bring.
THE MEANING
When the message reaches you, refusing what has come near carries a heavier reckoning. In that day, Sodom’s outcome is described as more bearable by comparison.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing the message leaves you unaccountable: what reaches you carries consequence when you refuse it.
THE ROOT
ἀνεκτότερον
anektoteron
GROWS FROM
ἔχω (echō), in ἀνέχομαι (anechomai)
ἔχω (echō) means “hold” or “have”; in ἀνέχομαι (anechomai), it carries the sense of holding up against something, bearing or enduring it.
“tolerable” in this verse is anektoteron. The comparative ἀνεκτότερον comes through ἀνεκτός (anektos, “bearable”) from this family of words for bearing or enduring. The verse pictures judgment by what can be borne: Sodom’s outcome is more bearable than the refusal of the city receiving the message.
ALSO GROWS
anechomai: bear, endure, put up with
ἀνέχομαι
This verb-family gives “tolerable” its sense of what can be borne.
anochē: forbearance, restraint
ἀνοχή
This related noun shows the same bearing in the form of patience or restraint.
THE PATTERN
The more light that reaches a person, the more weight their refusal carries.
Only you have I known, out of all the families of the ground. Therefore I will visit upon you all your crookednesses.But I say to you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.But the one who did not know, and did what deserves blows, will be beaten with few blows. To everyone to whom much is given, much will be sought from him, and to whom much has been placed beside him, they will ask all the more of him.THE THREAD
Or do you look down upon the fullness of his kindness, and the holding back, and the slowness to heat, not perceiving that the kindness of God leads you to turning?“Forbearance” here is ἀνοχή (anochē), from the same word family as ἀνέχομαι (anechomai, “bear, endure”) behind “tolerable.” Luke speaks of what is borne in judgment; Romans speaks of God’s forbearance giving room for turning.
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