What Does Luke 21:13 Mean?
And it will go out from you as a witness.
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 it shall turn to you for a testimony.THE KEY
What brings you under scrutiny can become the setting where your witness is made visible.
THE MEANING
The event unfolding around you can turn into testimony, carrying your witness into public view. What presses you into view does not have to silence what you know; it can become the very occasion for it to be seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being put under pressure means your voice has already been taken from you; the same event can become an occasion for witness.
THE ROOT
μαρτύριον
martýrion
GROWS FROM
μαρτυρ-
martyr-
The Greek word family of witness and bearing witness.
The word translated “testimony” belongs to the same family as “witness” and “bear witness.” It points to a witness made visible through what happens, not only to a statement about what happened.
ALSO GROWS
mártys: witness
μάρτυς
The testimony is tied to a person who stands as a witness.
martyréō: bear witness, testify
μαρτυρέω
This branch names the act of making the witness known.
ἀποβήσεται
apobḗsetai
GROWS FROM
βαίνω
baínō
To go or step; in ἀποβαίνω, to turn out or result.
“turn” in this verse is apobḗsetai. The verb describes how an event comes out or results. The pressure is not called pleasant; it is shown issuing in testimony.
ALSO GROWS
baínō: go, step
βαίνω
The basic motion gives the verb its sense of an event moving toward an outcome.
ékbasis: outcome, way out
ἔκβασις
This related word also carries the sense of what an unfolding situation comes out to be.
THE PATTERN
The moment that puts a witness under scrutiny can become the moment that makes the witness audible.
I speak of your witnesses in sight of kings, and I am not put to shame.But watch yourselves, for they will hand you over to councils, and in the synagogues you will be beaten; and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a witness against them.For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.THE THREAD
For you will be his witness to all humankind, of what you have seen and heard.Luke’s “testimony” and Acts’ “witness” belong to the same Greek word family. The witness arises from what is seen and heard, and the event itself can carry it into public view.
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