What Does Luke 20:28 Mean?
Saying, Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if any man's brother dies, having a wife, and he dies without children, his brother should take the wife and raise up seed for his brother.
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
Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.THE KEY
“Raise up seed” shares its Greek word family with “resurrection,” so the brother’s line already carries the language of rising.
THE MEANING
The instruction binds a living brother’s future to the continuation of the brother who dies without children. Seed carries that line forward, giving the dead brother’s place a future in the life of another.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A childless death erases a person’s place in the family’s future.
THE ROOT
ἐξανιστήσῃ
exanistēsē
GROWS FROM
ἀνίστημι
anistēmi
To stand up or rise; in a compound, to raise up.
“raise up seed” in this verse is exanistēsē. The verb ἐξανίστημι (exanistēmi, raise up) belongs to the same word family as ἀνάστασις (anastasis, resurrection). English can make this sound like only a family duty, while the Greek also lets the phrase echo the rising at the heart of this passage.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: To stand up; to rise.
ἀνίστημι
This base verb carries the standing and rising idea inside “raise up.”
anastasis: Rising; resurrection.
ἀνάστασις
Luke uses this noun for resurrection later in the same exchange, linking the brother’s line standing through seed with the question of whether the dead rise.
σπέρμα
sperma
GROWS FROM
σπείρω
speirō
To sow or scatter seed.
The Greek noun σπέρμα (sperma, seed or offspring) keeps the act of sowing close to the idea of descent. The English word “seed” preserves the image, while its Greek word family makes offspring and sowing part of one pattern: a future planted into the living.
ALSO GROWS
speirō: To sow.
σπείρω
The shared word family connects offspring with the act of planting what will continue beyond the present.
spora: Sowing; seed.
σπορά
This related word keeps the image of seed tied to what is sown, illuminating how the brother’s line is carried forward.
THE PATTERN
Seed makes a dead person’s family line stand in the lives that continue.
And Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to your brother.And it shall be that the firstborn she bears shall rise up in the name of his brother who is dead, so that his name is not wiped out from Israel.So also is the rising of the dead. It is sown in decay; it is awakened in what does not decay.THE THREAD
Nor can they die any longer, for they are equal to the messengers, and they are children of God, being children of the rising.“Raise up” in this verse uses ἐξανίστημι (exanistēmi, raise up), from the same word family as ἀνάστασις (anastasis, resurrection) in this verse. The shared root lets the question of a brother’s line standing through seed open into the larger question of the dead rising.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us