What Does Luke 19:16 Mean?

And the first came, saying, "Lord, your mina has produced ten minas."

Luke 19:16 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.

THE KEY

The Greek word for “hath gained” grows from the word for work: the entrusted mina becomes fruitful when it is put to work.

THE MEANING

What is placed in your hands can yield more than its starting measure when it is put to work. The servant still calls the mina the lord’s, even as he names its increase.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that a small thing entrusted to you is too small to yield anything substantial.

THE ROOT

προσηργάσατο

prosērgasato

GROWS FROM

ἐργ-

erg-

work, exertion

The verb ⁨προσηργάσατο⁩ (prosērgasato, “hath gained”) is built on ⁨ἐργάζομαι⁩ (ergazomai, “to work”). The increase is pictured as the result of the entrusted value being worked with, not as something detached from it.

ALSO GROWS

ergon: work, deed

ἔργον

This noun names the work that forms the base of the verb translated “hath gained.”

ergatēs: worker, laborer

ἐργάτης

This branch names one who works, bringing the agent behind the increase into view.

synergeō: work together, cooperate

συνεργέω

It shares the same work-root and shows how that activity can happen in cooperation.

THE PATTERN

What is entrusted bears fruit when it is put to work, while its source remains acknowledged.

Then the one who had received five talents went and put them to work, and made five more talents.

Matthew 25:16 · SDVThe Greek verb translated “traded” comes from the same work-root, tying increase to what is done with what has been entrusted.

In all toil there is a remainder, but the word of the lips only bends toward lack.

Proverbs 14:23 · SDVThe proverb likewise connects profit with labor, setting active work against words that produce nothing.

Now the one who supplies seed to the sower supplies bread for eating, and fills out your sown seed, and makes grow the fruits of your alignment.

2 Corinthians 9:10 · SDVSeed supplied and sown multiplies into fruit, another picture of what is entrusted becoming more through use.

THE THREAD

Then the one who had received five talents went and put them to work, and made five more talents.

Matthew 25:16 · SDV

Luke’s ⁨προσηργάσατο⁩ (prosērgasato, “hath gained”) and Matthew’s ⁨ἠργάσατο⁩ (ērgasato, “traded”) share the Greek work-root ⁨ἐργ-⁩ (erg-, “work”). Matthew makes the hidden link especially visible: what the servant does with what he receives is described through the language of work.

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