What Does Luke 18:11 Mean?
The separated one stood and prayed this way within himself, God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of humankind, the grasping, the misaligned, the adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
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 Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.THE KEY
He invokes God, but uses other people as the mirror that declares him aligned.
THE MEANING
The speaker’s words reach toward God while his attention fixes on his own moral rank. He uses the people he names as a measure of himself, and his thanks becomes a declaration that he stands above them. The phrase translated “with himself” can also be heard as “to himself,” sharpening the possibility that the prayer folds back onto its speaker.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that another person’s wrongness is evidence of one’s own alignment.
THE ROOT
ἄδικοι
adikoi
GROWS FROM
δικ- (dik-) / δίκη (dikē)
Justice; what is right or due.
“the misaligned” in this verse is adikoi. “Unjust” (ἄδικοι, adikoi) adds a negative prefix to the δικ- family of justice and alignment. That makes his judgment of others share a verbal root with the “justified” verdict the publican receives in the next verse: the story’s irony is already planted inside this word.
ALSO GROWS
dikaios: Just; aligned with what is right.
δίκαιος
This is the positive form of the family he negates when he calls the others “unjust.”
dikaiosynē: Justice, righteousness; alignment.
δικαιοσύνη
The same family links a moral verdict to alignment, so “unjust” is more than a rival label.
dikaioō: Justify; declare just.
δικαιόω
Luke uses this same word family for the publican’s verdict in Luke 18:14.
THE PATTERN
Self-measurement that elevates one person over another can look clean in one’s own eyes while remaining subject to God’s measure.
All the ways of a person are clean in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the breaths.For I say, through the favor given to me, to every one among you, not to think of himself above what he ought to think, but to think soundly, as God has divided to each a measure of trust.But he gives greater favor. Therefore it says, God sets himself against those who lift themselves high, and gives favor to those made low.THE THREAD
I tell you, this man went down to his house aligned, rather than the other, for everyone who lifts himself up will be brought low, and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.“Unjust” in this verse and “justified” in the next share the δικ- (dik-) word family. The publican, whom the Pharisee uses as a measure of his own standing, receives the verdict the Pharisee assumes for himself.
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