What Does Luke 18:42 Mean?
And Jesus said to him, Look up again! Leaning your full weight has delivered you.
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 said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.THE KEY
The Greek word rendered “saved” is also translated “made thee whole” in another healing, so the man’s returned sight is itself deliverance.
THE MEANING
Jesus’ command meets the man as his sight opens: trust and bodily restoration converge in a deliverance he can see. The verse speaks of being brought through into wholeness as something present in the body.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that deliverance belongs only to an invisible, future state: here, it is visible as sight returning.
THE ROOT
σέσωκέν
sesōken
GROWS FROM
σῴζ- / σωκ- (sōz- / sōk-)
Rescue, preserve, bring safely through; the perfect form in this verse uses the stem σωκ-.
The Greek verb σῴζω (sōzō, deliver, preserve, heal) can describe bodily restoration as well as rescue. Its perfect form here, σέσωκεν (sesōken, has delivered or made whole), presents an accomplished act whose result stands now: the man’s sight and his deliverance are held together.
ALSO GROWS
sōzō: Deliver, rescue, preserve; also heal.
σῴζω
This is the lexical verb behind σέσωκέν, and its range holds bodily healing and deliverance together.
diasōzō: Bring safely through; preserve through danger.
διασῴζω
This compound makes the same family’s “through to safety” dimension explicit.
πίστις
pistis
GROWS FROM
πιστ-
pist-
Trustworthy, reliable, firm; the quality of trust and reliance.
“leaning your full weight” in this verse is pistis. The English “faith” can sound like a private quantity of belief, while this Greek word-family links trusting with being trustworthy. Here, trust is a relation of reliance, not a score the man possesses.
ALSO GROWS
pisteuō: Trust, believe, rely upon.
πιστεύω
The verb shows trust as an act of reliance, the living counterpart to the noun in this verse.
pistos: Trustworthy, reliable, firm.
πιστός
This branch links the act of trusting with the reliability on which trust rests.
ἀνάβλεψον
anablepson
GROWS FROM
βλεπ-
blep-
See, look, direct the eyes toward.
“Look up again” in this verse is anablepson. The Greek command ἀνάβλεψον (anablepson, see again or look up) joins ἀνά (ana, up or again) to βλέπω (blepō, see or look). “Receive thy sight” can sound like receiving an object; the Greek also presents seeing as perception returning.
ALSO GROWS
blepō: See, look.
βλέπω
This is the verb at the center of the command, making sight an act of seeing.
apoblepō: Look toward, fix one’s gaze upon.
ἀποβλέπω
The compound preserves βλέπ- and shows the same root in directed looking.
THE PATTERN
Restoration becomes visible when what was closed opens and a person returns to movement.
Then the eyes of the blind open, and the ears of the deaf open.The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD straightens the bent; the LORD loves the aligned.And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
And he said to him, Stand up and go your way; your trust has delivered you.Luke 17:19 uses the same Greek perfect form σέσωκέν (sesōken, has delivered or made whole) as this verse, though the KJV renders it “made thee whole” there and “saved thee” here. The repeated wording lets restored sight and wholeness appear as one deliverance.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us