What Does Luke 11:6 Mean?
For a friend of mine has come to me off the road, and I have nothing to set before him.
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
For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?THE KEY
The Greek asks what can be placed beside the guest, making welcome tangible at the exact point where scarcity says there is nothing.
THE MEANING
Someone arrives carrying the wear of a road, and your table becomes the place where the need is felt. The lack is stated without disguise: there is no bread ready to put before the guest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that caring for someone means you will always have something ready to give; care can be real while provision is absent.
THE ROOT
παραθήσω
parathēsō
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
To put or place; παρατίθημι means to place beside or set before.
The phrase makes welcome concrete: the question is what can be placed beside the arriving friend. English can make “set before” sound like a general act of serving, while the Greek carries the physical image of putting something within reach.
ALSO GROWS
tithēmi: Put or place
τίθημι
The base verb keeps the focus on what is actually placed before the guest.
epitithēmi: Place upon or lay on
ἐπιτίθημι
This related compound carries the same act of placing, showing how the shared verb base holds a physical action.
ἐξ ὁδοῦ
ex hodou
GROWS FROM
ὁδός
hodos
Road or way; the phrase literally means “from a road” and conveys arrival from a journey.
“off the road” in this verse is ex hodou. The guest comes “from the road,” so the need at the door is connected to movement and arrival. English gives the whole phrase as “journey,” while the Greek leaves the road itself visible.
ALSO GROWS
exodos: Departure or way out
ἔξοδος
The compound keeps ὁδός, “way,” inside a word for going out.
methodos: Pursuit or method
μέθοδος
This compound also carries ὁδός, showing how the concrete “way” extends into a course or path of pursuit.
THE PATTERN
A need arrives at a human threshold, and bread becomes the concrete measure of whether it can be shared.
Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to the heavens, he spoke good over them, and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.And they, holding fast day by day with one passion in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.THE THREAD
Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to the heavens, he spoke good over them, and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.“Set before” translates the same Greek verb, παρατίθημι (paratithēmi), that appears in Luke 11:6. Here one friend has nothing to place before a traveler; in Luke 9:16, bread is placed before a multitude.
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