What Does Luke 20:30 Mean?
And the second took her as wife, and he 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
And the second took her to wife, and he died childless.THE KEY
The Greek word for “childless” names the absence of what is brought forth, making this death a break in lineage as well as the end of a life.
THE MEANING
A marriage does not guarantee descendants: the second man takes the woman as his wife and dies without a child. The verse holds that interrupted continuity in plain view, without giving a cause or a remedy.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that marriage guarantees a continuing family line.
THE ROOT
ἄτεκνος
áteknos
GROWS FROM
τεκ- (tek-), related to τίκτω (tíktō)
To bring forth or beget; τέκνον (téknon) means a child or offspring.
ἄτεκνος joins the privative prefix ἀ- (a-, without) to the word for child: literally, without offspring. English “childless” can sound like a personal lack, while the Greek also makes visible the interrupted act of bringing forth.
ALSO GROWS
téknon: Child, offspring
τέκνον
This is the word for what the man dies without; it connects childlessness to the family line that might have been brought forth.
tíktō: Bear, give birth
τίκτω
This related verb names bringing forth, the action whose result is absent in “childless.”
THE PATTERN
The end of one mortal line does not set the limit of life.
Therefore from one, and that one already deadened, there were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand by the lip of the sea, uncounted.For he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.THE THREAD
And they had no child, because Elisabeth was unyielding, and they were both advanced in their days.Luke uses τέκνον (téknon, “child”) in both passages: here the man dies ἄτεκνος (áteknos, “without a child”), and there the couple has no τέκνον. The shared word connects two scenes of childlessness, while Luke 1 goes on to describe a child being born.
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