What Does Luke 22:20 Mean?
Likewise also the cup after the meal, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.
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
Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.THE KEY
The cup makes the covenant a shared, bodily bond: a life poured out and given for you.
THE MEANING
This cup is a covenant reaching you now through a life poured out for you. The bond is embodied and shared, reaching you as a present relationship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that covenant is only a distant promise or words on a page; here the bond is embodied in a poured-out life and offered to you.
THE ROOT
διαθήκη
diathēkē
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
To set, place, or lay down; through the compound verb behind the covenant word, the sense is of an arrangement set in place.
The covenant word grows from a family that carries the sense of setting something in place. The cup presents that bond through a life given for you, making the relationship tangible.
ALSO GROWS
diatithemai: to arrange, establish, or make a covenant
διατίθεμαι
This is the verb from which the covenant noun comes; the bond is something set in place.
tithēmi: to set or place; in John 10:11, to lay down one’s life
τίθημι
The same verb describes the shepherd laying down his life, linking the covenant’s establishment with a life given.
ἐκχυννόμενον
ekchynnomenon
GROWS FROM
χέω
To pour or flow; compounds specify pouring out or pouring onto something.
The verb makes the blood’s movement visible: it is poured out for others. Its word family also names breath poured out and oil poured onto wounds, joining costly giving with a flow that reaches another.
ALSO GROWS
ekcheō: to pour out
ἐκχέω
This verb describes breath being poured out in Acts 2:17, extending the image from the cup to a gift that reaches others.
epicheō: to pour onto or over
ἐπιχέω
Luke 10:34 uses this word family for oil and wine poured onto wounds, placing the same motion beside care.
καινή
kainē
GROWS FROM
καινός
New or fresh in character, carrying a sense of renewed quality.
The same adjective names a new creation and a new commandment, giving newness a qualitative edge. Here it points toward a renewed quality of relationship within the covenant.
ALSO GROWS
kainē ktisis: new creation
καινὴ κτίσις
This phrase in 2 Corinthians 5:17 uses the same adjective, linking covenant newness with a changed order of life.
entolē kainē: new commandment
ἐντολὴ καινή
In John 13:34, the same adjective describes a command that reshapes how people relate to one another.
THE PATTERN
A covenant becomes tangible through an enacted sign and reshapes the belonging it names.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.But this is the covenant I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will set my instruction within them, and write it upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.And nearly all things are cleansed in blood according to the instruction, and without the pouring out of blood, no release comes.THE THREAD
saying, "This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded you."Hebrews uses the same word for covenant and repeats the blood formula. The shared root lets Luke’s cup read as the covenant made tangible through a life poured out for you.
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