What Does Luke 16:28 Mean?
For I have five brothers, so that he may bear witness to them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
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 I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.THE KEY
The Greek word translated “torment” once named a touchstone for testing metal, an older image that resonates beside the man’s plea to send a witness.
THE MEANING
You are placed beside a man in torment who fears his five brothers will enter the same place. He wants a witness sent while they are still alive; his plea makes suffering a warning addressed to the living.
THE ROOT
βασάνου
basanou
GROWS FROM
βάσανος
basanos
An early sense is a touchstone used to test metal; the word later came to mean ordeal, torture, and torment.
Here the word means actual torment. Its history also carries an image of ordeal that exposes what is being tested, resonating with the plea for a witness to reach the living.
ALSO GROWS
basanizō: To test by ordeal, torture, or torment.
βασανίζω
This verb shows how the noun’s language of ordeal extends into the act of tormenting.
basanismos: Torture or torment.
βασανισμός
This related noun keeps the same connection between ordeal and suffering.
διαμαρτύρηται
diamartyrētai
GROWS FROM
μαρτυρ-
martyr-
To bear witness; to testify solemnly.
“bear witness” in this verse is diamartyrētai. The verb carries the sense of bearing witness, not merely making a statement. The man asks for a witness to reach his brothers while they can still hear.
ALSO GROWS
martys: A witness.
μάρτυς
This noun makes clear that testimony comes through someone who bears witness.
martyria: Testimony or witness.
μαρτυρία
This branch names the witness being requested: evidence carried to another person.
THE PATTERN
A warning reaches a person before consequence, carried by a witness while response remains possible.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.Then whoever hears the sound of the horn and does not respond, taking no warning; if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a deliverance? It first began to be spoken through the Lord, and was made firm to us by those who heard him.THE THREAD
Who point to the work of instruction written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness alongside them, and their reckonings between one another accusing or answering.Luke’s verb for “testify” belongs to the Greek witness-family around μαρτυρ- (martyr-). Romans uses that same word-family for conscience “bearing witness,” placing a witness within the hearer as well as in the voice the man wants sent to his brothers.
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