What Does Luke 20:43 Mean?
Until I make your enemies your footstool.
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
Till I make thine enemies thy footstool.THE KEY
The verse’s “make” means “place”: its hidden action is the reordering of power until resistance lies beneath the ruler’s feet.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you in the interval before what opposes you has shifted position. It holds the present tension together with an appointed end: resistance does not occupy the highest place forever. The image is severe, enemies are made a footrest beneath the ruler.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that opposition holds the final position: the verse places the interval “till” inside a promise that power will change hands.
THE ROOT
θῶ
thō
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
to put, set, or place
The verb translated “make” carries the sense of placing: the enemies are assigned a position beneath the ruler’s feet. That makes the image one of subjection and changed order, not simply disappearance.
ALSO GROWS
apotithēmi: to lay aside
ἀποτίθημι
This branch shows how the same root can describe putting something out of its former place.
epitithēmi: to lay upon
ἐπιτίθημι
This branch makes the placement concrete: something is set onto another, as the footstool is set beneath the feet.
THE PATTERN
Opposition reaches its appointed limit when authority places it beneath the feet of the one who rules.
A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet.You make him rule over the works of your hands; you place all things under his feet.For what remains, waiting until his enemies are set as a footstool beneath his feet.THE THREAD
For he must govern until he sets all his enemies under his feet.“Put” here and “make” in Luke come from the same Greek root, τίθημι (tithēmi), meaning to put or place. The shared root makes the connection precise: the reign described here takes shape as enemies are placed beneath the feet.
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