What Does Luke 19:21 Mean?
For I feared you, because you are a hard man. You lift what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow."
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 feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.THE KEY
The fear here has a shape: a master who demands the harvest without ever placing the seed.
THE MEANING
The speaker names fear and describes its object as severe authority that takes up and reaps without first placing or sowing. The verse holds the fear and the charge of unearned gain together without explaining either away. It speaks now wherever authority is experienced as a demand for returns without prior giving.
THE ROOT
ἐφοβήθην
ephobēthēn
GROWS FROM
φοβ-
phob-
Fear, alarm; the state of being afraid.
“feared” in this verse is ephobēthēn. The sentence begins with fear before giving its reasons: severity and a harvest without sowing. The word belongs to the same family as words for fear itself and for what is fearsome, keeping the speaker’s state and the threat he perceives closely linked.
ALSO GROWS
phobos: Fear, alarm.
φόβος
The noun names the fear that the speaker says shapes his account of the master.
phoberos: Fearsome, frightening.
φοβερός
This branch describes what evokes fear, linking the speaker’s inner state to the severe figure he describes.
θερίζεις
therizeis
GROWS FROM
θεριζ-
theriz-
To reap or harvest.
“reap; sow” in this verse is therizeis. This word names the gathering of a crop; its related words name the harvest and the reaper. Here the servant describes that gathering as detached from sowing, making the charge one of return without its beginning.
ALSO GROWS
therismos: Harvest, harvest time.
θερισμός
The related noun names the season and result of the gathering the servant accuses the master of taking.
theristēs: Reaper, harvester.
θεριστής
This branch names the one who gathers, giving the servant’s image of the master a human agent.
σπείρας
speiras
GROWS FROM
σπειρ-
speir-
To sow or scatter seed.
“reap; sow” in this verse is speiras. The Greek word for sowing belongs to a family that also names sowing and seed. The servant’s contrast makes the harvest seem severed from the seed-bearing act that would ordinarily precede it.
ALSO GROWS
spora: Sowing, seed.
σπορά
This branch keeps the act of sowing connected to the seed that enters the ground.
sperma: Seed, offspring.
σπέρμα
The seed-word shows what the servant says is missing from the master’s claim to a harvest.
THE PATTERN
Fear can make a presence feel like a threat and turn that threat into hiding or bondage.
And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I trembled, because I was bare; and I hid myself.The trembling of man sets a snare, but the one who leans his full weight on the LORD is set on high.And loosen those who through fear of death were held in slavery throughout all their living.THE THREAD
Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.Luke uses the same Greek verbs for sowing and reaping, but the servant describes reaping without sowing. Galatians joins those verbs: what is sown is what is reaped, making the servant’s charge about a harvest severed from its source.
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