What Does Luke 23:18 Mean?
And they cried out all together, saying, Lift this man away, and release Barabbas to us.
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 they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:THE KEY
The crowd uses the language of freedom to release the guilty and demand the removal of the innocent.
THE MEANING
A crowd can demand freedom for the guilty while insisting that the innocent be taken away. The two commands reveal how a public demand can turn release into a choice about whom justice serves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Agreement does not make a demand just: a crowd can call for a guilty man’s release while rejecting the innocent.
THE ROOT
ἀπόλυσον
apolýson
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
to loosen, untie, or unbind
The request to release Barabbas carries the sense of loosening someone from restraint. Set beside the command to take Jesus away, release is not an abstract idea here: one man is let go while the other is rejected.
ALSO GROWS
apolýō: to release, dismiss, or set free
ἀπολύω
This is the verb behind the crowd’s request; it names the loosening Barabbas is to receive.
katalýō: to loosen down, dismantle, or destroy
καταλύω
The same root can describe something being taken apart, echoing the verse’s paired movement of release for one and removal for another.
THE PATTERN
When judgment is driven by collective desire, the guilty can be released as the just are rejected.
He who aligns the wicked, and he who convicts the aligned one, both are loathed by the LORD.Who align the wicked for a bribe, and take the alignment of the aligned one from him!But you turned away from the Set-Apart One and the Aligned One, and you asked for a man of blood to be given to you as favor.THE THREAD
And he released to them the one who had been thrown into prison for rising and bloodshed, the one they had asked for, but he handed Jesus over to their will.The crowd asks for Barabbas to be released, and this verse repeats the same Greek release verb as the demand is carried out. The shared root frames the exchange: Barabbas is let go, while Jesus is handed over.
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