What Does Luke 22:65 Mean?
And they spoke many other reviling things against him.
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 many other things blasphemously spake they against him.THE KEY
The violence here is verbal, but it is still violence: the text names the words as slander aimed at him.
THE MEANING
The verse recognizes contempt spoken against a person as real harm. Repeated words can form a sustained attack, even without a visible wound.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that words cannot wound because they leave no visible mark.
THE ROOT
βλασφημοῦντες
blasphēmountes
GROWS FROM
βλασφημ-
blasphēm-
to slander, speak abusively, or reproach
“reviling” in this verse is blasphēmountes. The Greek word names slanderous, abusive speech, marking the utterance itself as an attack upon a person. Its target is explicit: these words are directed against him, not left as irreverence in the abstract.
ALSO GROWS
blasphēmia: slander; abusive speech or reproach
βλασφημία
The related noun names this kind of speech as an act of slander.
blasphēmos: slanderous; abusive
βλάσφημος
The related adjective describes speech or a speaker carrying that reproach.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats words as actions with power to wound, and shows that receiving them need not mean returning the wound.
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.There is one who blurts like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is healing.Who, when he was insulted, hurled no insult back; when he suffered, he threatened not; but handed himself over to the one who judges by alignment.THE THREAD
One of the workers of evil who hung there reviled him, saying, If you are the Anointed One, deliver yourself and us.Luke uses the same Greek verb, ἐβλασφήμει (eblasphēmēi, “he was railing” or “speaking abusively”), from βλασφημέω (blasphēmeō, “to slander or speak abusively”). The shared verb makes the continuity audible: this taunt is another instance of speech aimed at him as slander.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us