What Does Luke 2:3 Mean?
And all went to be written down, each one into his own city.
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 all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.THE KEY
The count reaches the whole by routing each person through the city that is their own.
THE MEANING
The whole population moves, yet each person is entered through a particular place of belonging. The verse holds the many and the individual together: everyone is counted, each in relation to their own city.
THE ROOT
ἀπογράφεσθαι
apographesthai
GROWS FROM
γράφω
graphō
to write or enter in writing
“to be written down” in this verse is apographesthai. The verb ἀπογράφω (apographō, register) grows around γράφω (graphō, write), so the enrollment is an entry made in a record. The nearby noun ἀπογραφή (apographē, registration or census) names that enrollment, while “every one” keeps the count individual.
ALSO GROWS
graphē: A written text; in the New Testament, also Scripture.
γραφή
The same writing-root links this enrollment to the act of setting something down in a text.
epigraphō: To write or inscribe upon something.
ἐπιγράφω
An inscription fixes words in writing, sharpening the sense of each person being entered into a record.
πόλιν
polin
GROWS FROM
πολ-/πολι-
city and civic community
The word-family around πόλις (polis, city) also names the citizen and civic life. “His own city” therefore places each person within a particular civic community as the enrollment takes place.
ALSO GROWS
politēs: A citizen or member of a city.
πολίτης
The city-word family connects place with membership in a people.
politeia: Citizenship, civic life, or a commonwealth.
πολιτεία
This branch shows that a city can name a shared civic order as well as a location.
THE PATTERN
A people can be gathered as a whole while each person remains connected to a particular place and identity.
And they gathered all the assembly together on the first day of the second month, and they declared their births after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, head by head.The LORD counts when he writes up the peoples; this one is born there. Selah.And there were Jews settled in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven.THE THREAD
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the inhabited earth should be written down.Luke 2:1 gives the enrollment decree in one sweep; it uses the same ἀπογράφω (apographō, register) word-family. Luke 2:3 shows that decree taking shape through each person’s journey to their own city.
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