What Does Luke 20:12 Mean?
And again he sent a third, and they wounded him also, and threw him out.
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 again he sent a third: and they wounded him also, and cast him out.THE KEY
The refusal becomes a boundary: the messenger is wounded, then thrown beyond it.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two harms together: the messenger is injured, then expelled. Rejection here reaches both the body and the place where a person is allowed to remain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rejection is only disagreement: here, refusal becomes bodily harm and removal of the witness.
THE ROOT
ἐξέβαλον
exebalon
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
To throw, cast, or put; joined with ἐκ (ek, out), the action is directed outward.
“threw him out” in this verse is exebalon. The Greek verb gives the expulsion a direction: the messenger is thrown out across a boundary. Its word family can also describe something cast away or something placed onto a surface; here, the direction is unmistakably outward.
ALSO GROWS
ekbolē: a casting out or jettisoning
ἐκβολή
This word can describe throwing cargo overboard; it makes the force of the messenger’s removal concrete.
epiblēma: a patch or piece put onto a garment
ἐπίβλημα
This related word uses the same root for putting something onto a surface; the prefix changes the direction from placing upon to casting out.
THE PATTERN
When a message is resisted, the messenger carrying it can become the target of escalating harm.
But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the burning of the LORD's anger rose against his people, until there was no healing.But they were contrary, and rebelled against you, and threw your instruction behind their backs, and killed your prophets, who testified against them to turn them back to you, and they wrought great spurnings.Which of the prophets did your fathers not pursue? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Aligned One, of whom you have now become the handers over and the blood-spillers.THE THREAD
They answered and said to him, You were born wholly in shortcomings, and do you teach us? And they cast him out.The shared Greek verb ἐκβάλλω (ekballō, cast out) links the two scenes. In both, someone who bears unwelcome testimony is forced beyond the boundary.
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