What Does Luke 20:37 Mean?
Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calls the LORD the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
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
Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.THE KEY
God’s present claim on the dead makes their story unfinished: the same God who names them raises them awake.
THE MEANING
Death does not place you beyond God’s living claim. Jesus names Abraham, יִצְחָק (Yitzchak, “he laughs”), and Jacob as people God still calls his own. The dead are raised as God awakens them; death does not seal their story.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death turns a person’s relationship with God into a finished past.
THE ROOT
ἐγείρονται
egeirontai
GROWS FROM
ἐγερ-
eger-
to awaken, rouse, raise
“Raised” is a present passive form of ἐγείρω (egeirō, “to awaken or raise”). The same root also names a rising or resurrection, so the verse frames death’s answer as waking and being raised under God’s continuing claim.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: to awaken, rouse, raise
ἐγείρω
The verb behind “are raised” also describes waking, giving resurrection the sense of being awakened into life.
egersis: a rising, resurrection
ἔγερσις
This noun names the rising itself with the same root, showing the movement from death as an act of being raised.
יִצְחָק
Yitzchak
GROWS FROM
צחק
tzachaq
to laugh
Isaac’s name carries the root of laughter within the very chain of names Jesus recites. The God who claims the dead holds their names and the lives inside them, including the laughter hidden by the English name.
ALSO GROWS
tzachaq: to laugh
צָחַק
The verb beneath Isaac’s name makes the name a living trace of laughter in the list of those God claims.
tsechoq: laughter
צְחוֹק
The noun carries the same seed into the thing itself: laughter remains joined to the name Isaac, even as Jesus speaks of the dead being raised.
THE PATTERN
God’s present claim keeps the dead within a relationship that death cannot end.
Moreover he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was in awe to look upon God.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.In an instant, in the flick of an eye, at the last trumpet; for it will sound, and the dead will be awakened undecaying, and we will be made other.THE THREAD
In an instant, in the flick of an eye, at the last trumpet; for it will sound, and the dead will be awakened undecaying, and we will be made other.“Shall be raised” comes from the same Greek root as “are raised” here, a root that also carries the sense of waking. It opens the present verse further: the dead are not only held in God’s claim; they are raised into incorruptible life.
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