What Does Luke 13:15 Mean?
Then the Lord answered him, "Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath unbind his ox or his donkey from the trough, and lead it out and water it?"
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
The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?THE KEY
The same Greek verb names both untying the animal and unbinding the woman, so the permitted act of care exposes the limit of the rule.
THE MEANING
The verse puts an ordinary act of care in view: an animal is untied and led to water even on the Sabbath. That same release belongs to the woman’s healing in the surrounding scene. Care for an animal is already allowed; the question is whether it can include a bound human being.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that honoring sacred rest requires refusing needed relief: even this rule makes room to release an animal so it can drink.
THE ROOT
λύει
lyei
GROWS FROM
λύω
luō
to loosen, untie, release
“unbind” in this verse is lyei. The Greek verb here is the same verb used in the next verse for the woman being loosed from her bond. Jesus’ comparison turns on that shared action: the release already allowed for an animal also names the healing at issue.
ALSO GROWS
lythēnai: To be released; the form used of the woman in Luke 13:16.
λύθηναι
It makes the link explicit: the woman’s release and the animal’s untying are expressed through the same root.
apolelysai: The form used when Jesus tells the woman she is loosed from her infirmity in Luke 13:12.
ἀπολέλυσαι
This compound of the same root names her healing as release, placing the animal’s ordinary untying beside the restoration at the heart of the scene.
THE PATTERN
Care takes the concrete form of releasing what is bound so living beings can receive needed relief.
Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall stop, that your ox and your donkey may settle, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, "Woman, you have been unbound from your weakness."The one who had died came out, his hands and feet bound in strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped his face. Jesus said to them, Untie him, and let him go.THE THREAD
And this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom the Adversary has bound, look, these eighteen years, ought she not to be unbound from this binding on the sabbath day?The “loosed” here and the “loosed” in the next verse share λύω (luō, to loosen or release): λύει (lyei, loosens) here and λυθῆναι (lythēnai, to be loosed) there. The same action applies to the animal and the woman, making the contrast in who receives release impossible to miss.
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