What Does Luke 10:38 Mean?
Now as they went, he entered a certain village, and a woman named Martha took him into her house.
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
Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.THE KEY
Here, receiving means letting a presence cross the threshold of the space you hold.
THE MEANING
Martha’s name, Μάρθα (Martha, “lady” or “mistress”), is paired with a concrete welcome: she receives him inside her house. The Greek ὑποδέχομαι (hypodechomai, “welcome as a guest”) presents receiving as an arrival into the space she holds. The verse speaks of welcome as something a home can embody.
THE ROOT
ὑπεδέξατο
hypedexato
GROWS FROM
δεχ
dech
The Greek verb stem for receiving or welcoming.
English “received” can sound like a passing greeting. The compound verb names welcoming someone as a guest, evoking the act of taking them under one’s roof or care; here welcome becomes shelter and shared space.
ALSO GROWS
dechomai: receive, welcome
δέχομαι
This is the core verb inside the compound: the act of taking someone in.
apodechomai: welcome, accept, receive favorably
ἀποδέχομαι
This related form carries the same receiving core into open acceptance.
οἶκον
oikon
GROWS FROM
οἰκ
oik
Dwelling; the home and household gathered around it.
“house” in this verse is oikon. The οἰκ- family names both a dwelling and the household within it. Martha’s welcome takes place in that lived sphere: receiving him means opening her home.
ALSO GROWS
oikia: house, home, household
οἰκία
This branch makes clear that the word can point to a dwelling and the people who belong to it.
oikodespotēs: master of a house, householder
οἰκοδεσπότης
This branch links the house to the person who holds and orders its space.
THE PATTERN
Welcome takes shape when someone is received into the space another person opens.
Let a little water be taken, please, and wash your feet, and lean yourselves under the tree.And when she was immersed, and her household, she urged us, saying, If you have judged me steady in the Lord, come into my house and stay there. And she pressed us.Do not let slip the opening of your home to strangers, for by it some have sheltered messengers without knowing it.THE THREAD
And he hurried and came down, and took him in rejoicing.Luke uses the same verb, ὑποδέχομαι (hypodechomai, “welcome as a guest”), for Zacchaeus receiving Jesus. In both scenes, welcome is an arrival into someone’s lived space.
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