What Does Luke 20:16 Mean?
He will come and make those who work the soil perish, and he will give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, May it never come to be.
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
He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.THE KEY
The tenants lose the vineyard by treating stewardship as ownership, and the verb for their destruction also names being lost.
THE MEANING
The vineyard in my hands is entrusted, never beyond its giver’s claim: when its keepers seize what is not theirs, the story says they are destroyed and the vineyard passes to others. The hearers’ “God forbid” voices the recoil this outcome provokes, but the protest does not erase the transfer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being entrusted with something means its place and fruit are mine to keep permanently.
THE ROOT
ἀπολέσει
apolesei
GROWS FROM
ἀπόλλυμι
apollymi
To destroy or perish; to be lost.
“make perish” in this verse is apolesei. The verb translated “destroy” belongs to the same Greek word family used for being “lost” or “perished.” The vineyard continues while its keepers perish: the root joins ruin to lostness without softening the violence of the verse.
ALSO GROWS
apolōlos: lost, perished
ἀπολωλός
This participle from the same verb family appears in Luke 19:10 for what is lost, linking the tenants’ end with the language of lostness.
apōleia: destruction, ruin
ἀπώλεια
This related noun makes the ruin sense explicit, showing that destruction and lostness grow from the same Greek word family.
THE PATTERN
What is entrusted remains accountable to its giver, and its stewardship can pass to others when its keepers seize it as their own.
A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.They said to him, He will make those evil men perish badly, and will let the vineyard out to others who work the soil, who will give him back the fruits in their seasons.As each has received a gift, serve it to one another as good stewards of the many-colored favor of God.THE THREAD
For the Son of Man has come to seek and to deliver that which had lost its way.“Lost” here translates a form from the same ἀπόλλυμι word family as “destroy” in Luke 20:16. The family holds both the state of perishing and of being lost; here it names the tenants’ end, while Luke 19:10 speaks of the lost being sought and delivered.
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