What Does Luke 21:16 Mean?
And you will be handed over by parents, and by brothers, and by kin, and by friends, and they will bring some of you to death.
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 ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.THE KEY
The word translated “betrayed” means “handed over”: danger can arrive through the very bonds we assume will protect us.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks plainly of a threat that reaches into family and friendship: people closest to you can hand you over, and some are killed. Closeness does not guarantee protection from betrayal or violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that family ties and affection make betrayal impossible.
THE ROOT
παραδοθήσεσθε
paradothēsesthe
GROWS FROM
παραδίδωμι
paradidōmi
To give; in this compound, to hand over or deliver, and in this context, to betray.
“handed over” in this verse is paradothēsesthe. English “betrayed” can sound like a moral category, but παραδίδωμι names the concrete act of handing someone over. The same word family names what is handed down as tradition, so the verse’s pain is carried by a verb of transfer: a person is passed from a close relation into danger.
ALSO GROWS
paradidōmi: To give someone into another’s custody; in this passage, the context makes the handover betrayal.
παραδίδωμι
It shows that betrayal here is an act of transfer, not only a feeling or accusation.
paradosis: A teaching or practice that has been handed down; this noun belongs to the same word family.
παράδοσις
The shared family reveals the motion of passing something, or someone, from one holder to another.
φίλων
philōn
GROWS FROM
φίλος (philos), φίλ- (phil-)
Love or affection; φίλος names one joined by affection, a friend.
“friends” in this verse is philōn. The word for friend carries the language of affection, not merely the label of an acquaintance. That makes the betrayal’s wound sharper: the verse places a loving bond beside the act of handing someone over.
ALSO GROWS
phileō: To love or cherish; it belongs to the same affection word family as φίλος, friend.
φιλέω
The friend’s closeness is rooted in affection, which makes the threat within friendship especially stark.
philadelphia: Brotherly love, the affection expressed between brothers and sisters.
φιλαδελφία
The same family of affection words can name bonds of love even as this verse names the possibility of rupture within close bonds.
THE PATTERN
When loyalty fractures, the threat can rise through the closest bonds rather than only from outside them.
For the son sets the father at nothing, the daughter rises against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.Brother will hand brother over to death, and father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to die.After Jesus had said these things, he was shaken in breath, and testified, and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will hand me over.THE THREAD
He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, how will he not also favor us with all things along with him?The verb translated “betrayed” here is the same Greek verb translated “delivered him up” in Romans 8:32. In Luke, close relations hand someone into danger; in Romans, the Son is handed over for all, and the shared verb holds both painful betrayal and costly giving.
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