What Does Luke 22:50 Mean?
And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.
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 one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.THE KEY
The right ear taken here is the very place Torah marks with blood when a priest is set apart.
THE MEANING
One person’s allegiance becomes a blow against the high priest’s servant, and his right ear is taken away. The wound falls on the same place marked in priestly setting apart, making the cost of violence visible in the body and in the organ of hearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that force becomes holy when it is used to defend what is holy.
THE ROOT
ἀφεῖλεν
apheilen
GROWS FROM
ἀφαιρέω (aphaireō), from ἀπό (apo, away) + αἱρέω (haireō, take)
Take away, remove.
The KJV gives the injury as “cut off,” while the verb’s wider sense is taking something away. The same verb names taking away sins in Hebrews 10:4, but here the object remains brutally physical: a human ear.
ALSO GROWS
apheilen: Took away or removed.
ἀφεῖλεν
Here, what is removed is the servant’s right ear; the verb holds the physical violence in view.
aphairein: To take away or remove.
ἀφαιρεῖν
The same verb names taking away sins there, showing how one Greek verb can describe removal with very different objects.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks the ear as a place of setting apart and opened hearing, and returns to it when it is wounded and healed.
Then you slaughter the ram, and take some of his blood, and set it upon the lobe of Aaron's right ear, and upon the lobe of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot, and dash the blood upon the altar all around.You do not delight in slaughtered offering or gift. You bore through my ears. The rising offering and the offering for falling short you do not ask.Jesus answered and said, Let it be this far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.THE THREAD
And he slaughtered it, and Moses took some of its blood, and set it upon the lobe of Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.This is the rite that makes the right ear in Luke more than a random detail: Aaron’s ear receives blood as part of his setting apart. The servant’s severed ear occupies that same bodily site, so the wound strikes a place associated with priestly hearing and service.
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