What Does Luke 20:14 Mean?
But when those who work the soil perceived him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.
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
But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.THE KEY
The tenants recognize the rightful heir, then choose murder as a way to seize his allotted share.
THE MEANING
This verse names a live human calculation: the heir is recognized, yet his life is treated as an obstacle to another’s possession. The tenants deliberately choose murder so the inheritance might become theirs. The violence stays in view; desire does not make it abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It exposes the lie that removing the rightful heir can make his inheritance rightfully yours.
THE ROOT
κληρονόμος
klēronomos
GROWS FROM
κλῆρος (klēros, allotted share) + νέμω (nemō, allot or distribute)
An allotted share and the act of allotting it; together, the compound names one who receives an inheritance.
The verse uses words for “heir” and “inheritance” built around the same idea of an allotted share. The tenants know whose share it is, yet imagine they can make it theirs by killing the person who carries the claim.
ALSO GROWS
klēros: lot, allotted share
κλῆρος
The inheritance is a share with an identifiable claimant, not an unclaimed prize.
klēronomia: inheritance
κληρονομία
The word for what the tenants want belongs to the same word family as the heir they plan to kill.
klēronomeō: to inherit
κληρονομέω
The related verb describes receiving an allotted share, sharpening the contrast between receiving and seizing it through murder.
THE PATTERN
When people treat another’s rightful share as their prize, the person who carries the claim becomes an obstacle to remove.
Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and throw him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast has devoured him, and we will see what becomes of his dreams.And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that Naboth was stoned and dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Rise, take hold of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for silver. For Naboth is not alive, but dead.You crave, and do not have. You murder, and burn to have, and cannot reach it. You battle and wage war, yet you do not have, because you do not ask.THE THREAD
So you are no longer a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through the Anointed One.Galatians uses the same Greek word, κληρονόμος (klēronomos, heir). Luke’s tenants treat the heir as an obstacle to erase so they can seize his share; Galatians frames inheritance through sonship, revealing the difference between taking an inheritance and receiving one as kin.
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