What Does Luke 20:29 Mean?
There were then seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children.
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
There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children.THE KEY
The Greek gathers “without children” into one word, making the absence of a child the hinge on which the brothers’ story turns.
THE MEANING
Here, marriage begins and death follows without a child. That absence is the hinge: the question that follows turns on who carries a family line forward when the first household ends childless.
THE ROOT
ἄτεκνος
ateknos
GROWS FROM
τεκν-
tekn-
Child or offspring; the seed concept within ἄτεκνος (ateknos, without children).
English spreads the phrase across two words, while Greek compresses it into ἄτεκνος (ateknos, without children), formed from ἀ- (a-, without) and τέκνον (teknon, child). The word places the rupture precisely where a child would carry the family line forward.
ALSO GROWS
teknon: Child or offspring.
τέκνον
This is the seed word within ἄτεκνος (ateknos, without children), making the absence specific: there is no child.
teknogoneō: To bear children.
τεκνογονέω
This related word extends the same root toward the bringing forth of children, sharpening what is missing when the first brother dies without them.
THE PATTERN
When death leaves a family line without a child, kinship becomes a route through which the dead person’s name can continue.
If brothers settle together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not go out to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her to himself as a wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother toward her.And Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to your brother.Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead not be cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place. You are witnesses this day.THE THREAD
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.The same Greek word, ἄτεκνος (ateknos, without children), appears in both verses. The preceding line names the rule; this verse gives its first case, making the absence of a child the pressure that carries the question forward.
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