What Does Luke 13:16 Mean?
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?
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 ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?THE KEY
Jesus treats this woman’s release not as an exception to the Sabbath, but as what the Sabbath is for.
THE MEANING
The woman is seen fully: Abraham’s daughter, and one the Adversary has bound for eighteen years. The length of her bondage does not make it rightful or make release untimely. On the Sabbath, her release is part of the meaning of rest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that a long-standing affliction must simply be endured, or that Sabbath holiness requires leaving a person bound.
THE ROOT
λυθῆναι
lythēnai
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
to loosen, unbind, release
“unbound” in this verse is lythēnai. The verb for her release names an actual unbinding. Its force becomes vivid beside the repeated language of bonds: the sentence moves from what has held her to the possibility of release.
ALSO GROWS
apolýō: to release or dismiss
ἀπολύω
This compound uses the same verb family and shows release as letting someone go from what holds them.
lýsis: a loosening or release
λύσις
This noun makes explicit the loosening contained in the verb used for the woman’s release.
ἔδησεν
edēsen
GROWS FROM
δέω
déō
to bind, tie, fasten
The verb translated “bound” and the noun translated “bond” belong to the same binding word family. That echo makes the contrast with λύω especially clear: the woman is bound into a bond, and the verse asks whether she should be released from it.
ALSO GROWS
déō: to bind or tie
δέω
This is the verb family behind the account of what the Adversary has done to her.
desmṓtēs: a prisoner or one in bonds
δεσμώτης
This related word shows how binding can describe a person held in confinement, giving weight to the passage’s language of bondage.
THE PATTERN
Scripture ties Sabbath and worship to deliverance, naming the release of the burdened as part of their purpose.
Remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD your God brought you out from there with a gripping hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to guard the sabbath day.Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?How much more does a human surpass a sheep? So it is permitted to do good on the Sabbath.THE THREAD
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.“Loose him” uses the same Greek verb, λύω (lyō), as “be loosed” in Luke. Both verses make the binding visible, then name release as the change that lets a person go.
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