What Does Luke 11:27 Mean?
And it came to be, as he was speaking these things, that a certain woman from the crowd lifted up her voice and said to him, Flourishing is the womb that carried you, and the breasts that nursed you.
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 it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.THE KEY
Here, flourishing is recognized through the body’s two acts of sustaining life: carrying it and feeding it.
THE MEANING
You hear a woman call flourishing the womb that bears life and the breasts that nourish it. Her words give gestation and nursing a public voice, naming bodily care as part of what is worthy of praise.
THE ROOT
μακαρία
makaria
GROWS FROM
μακαρ-
makar-
Flourishing; a state of well-being.
The woman’s word names the body that carried and nourished Jesus as flourishing. In this Greek word-family, flourishing can be spoken aloud as recognition.
ALSO GROWS
makarios: Flourishing
μακάριος
This is the related adjective behind the woman’s declaration.
makarizō: To call flourishing or pronounce blessed
μακαρίζω
This related verb shows how flourishing becomes something spoken over another.
κοιλία
koilia
GROWS FROM
κοῖλος
koilos
Hollow; an interior or cavity.
The Greek word κοιλία can mean both “womb” and “belly,” joining the place that carries life with the body’s inner space. Here, the woman’s praise makes that hidden interior part of what she sees as flourishing.
ALSO GROWS
koilos: Hollow
κοῖλος
This related word carries the sense of an inward space beneath the more specific meaning “womb.”
koilia: Belly or womb
κοιλία
The same Greek word can name the belly in one setting and the womb in another, meanings English renders with separate words.
ἐθήλασας
ethēlasas
GROWS FROM
θηλ-
thēl-
Breast or nipple; nursing from the breast.
The verb translated “sucked” belongs to a breast-related word-family, tying the act of nursing to the body that feeds. The verse names the breasts and the feeding together, keeping nourishment visible rather than implied.
ALSO GROWS
thēlē: Breast or nipple
θηλή
This related noun names the bodily source of the nursing action.
thēlazō: To nurse or suckle
θηλάζω
This is the verb-family behind the verse’s word for being nursed.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes the body that carries and nourishes life a visible place where flourishing is spoken.
From the God of your father, who shall help you, and from the Almighty, who shall bless you with the blessings of heaven above, and of the deep that crouches below, and of breasts and womb.Look, children are the LORD's portion; and the fruit of the womb is a wage.And she cried out in a great outcry, and said, Well spoken of are you among women, and well spoken of is the fruit of your womb.THE THREAD
And Flourishing is she who leaned her full weight, for there will be a completion of what was spoken to her from beside the LORD.Luke uses the same Greek word, μακαρία (makaria, flourishing), here and in the woman’s declaration in Luke 11:27. One verse locates Mary’s flourishing in the body that carried and fed Jesus; the other names her trust, holding both recognitions together.
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