What Does Luke 14:3 Mean?
And Jesus answered the experts in instruction and the separated ones, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day, or not?
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 Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?THE KEY
The Greek word for “heal” also means to attend and serve, so the question tests whether the Sabbath can exclude care itself.
THE MEANING
The question keeps the person needing care visible where rules meet human need. Healing is placed within the meaning of Sabbath rest, and the rule itself must answer whether it serves life. The verse speaks to the moment when care and observance seem to conflict.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that honoring a sacred day can require withholding care from someone who needs healing.
THE ROOT
θεραπεῦσαι
therapeusai
GROWS FROM
θεραπευ-
therapeu-: attend or serve; care for and treat.
English “heal” can sound like an outcome, but θεραπεύω also means to attend and serve; the word holds caring action inside healing. The question asks whether this attentive care belongs on the Sabbath.
ALSO GROWS
therapeuō: to attend, serve, care for, or heal
θεραπεύω
This verb shows that healing includes the act of caring for someone.
therapeia: care, service, or healing
θεραπεία
This related word keeps healing and attentive service in the same family.
therapeutēs: attendant or healer
θεραπευτής
The word names the one who gives care, making healing an act of service as well as a result.
σαββάτῳ
sabbatō
GROWS FROM
σαββατ-
sabbat-: Sabbath; the weekly day of rest.
The Sabbath is not an abstract rule in this question; it is the setting in which care is weighed. Its rest and the act of healing meet in the same moment.
ALSO GROWS
sabbatizō: to keep or observe the Sabbath
σαββατίζω
This verb names the practice whose purpose is at stake in the question.
sabbatismos: Sabbath rest or keeping of the Sabbath
σαββατισμός
This related form holds rest within the Sabbath word family, alongside the question of healing.
THE PATTERN
Sabbath rest is for the relief and restoration of living beings.
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.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.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 THREAD
He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.The Greek term translated “sabbath” is the same lexeme, σάββατον (sabbaton), in Mark’s declaration that Sabbath is made for humanity. That shared word opens the question toward purpose: healing belongs within a day ordered toward human good.
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