What Does Luke 11:11 Mean?
Which of you who is a father, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
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
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?THE KEY
The father’s goodness appears in refusing to replace nourishment with harm.
THE MEANING
When you ask for what sustains you, this verse presents a father’s care as fitting the need rather than answering with its harmful opposite. Its paired images make the distinction concrete: bread is not stone, and fish is not a serpent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the fear that the one you ask for care will answer your need with harm disguised as a gift.
THE ROOT
ἐπιδώσει
epidōsei
GROWS FROM
δο-
do-
give, grant
“give” in this verse is epidōsei. The same compound verb names both imagined harmful answers: the contrast lies in what is given, not in the act of giving. Its word family links giving with gift, showing that a good answer fits the need rather than merely handing something over.
ALSO GROWS
didōmi: to give, grant
δίδωμι
This is the base verb in the word used for giving the stone or serpent; the same act can carry a fitting gift or a harmful substitute.
dosis: a giving, a gift
δόσις
This related noun holds giving and gift together, illuminating the verse’s focus on the quality of what the father gives.
THE PATTERN
A caring giver answers need with what is good rather than withholding it or substituting harm.
For the LORD God is sun and shield. The LORD gives favor and weight. He will hold back no good from those who walk in wholeness.Every good giving and every complete gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no shifting and no shadow cast by turning.He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, how will he not also favor us with all things along with him?THE THREAD
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from the heavens give the Set-Apart Breath to those who ask him?The next verse makes the comparison explicit: even human fathers know how to give good gifts, and the heavenly Father gives the Set-Apart Breath to those who ask. It carries the contrast from bread and fish to the Father’s own life-giving gift.
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