What Does Luke 23:27 Mean?
A great crowd of people followed him, and women who also beat their breasts and wailed for 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 there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.THE KEY
Here, grief is not a view from the roadside; it follows the condemned and makes sorrow visible.
THE MEANING
When you see someone suffering, sorrow can remain visibly beside them even when it cannot change what is happening. This verse holds that helplessness without erasing the mourners or softening the violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that compassion matters only when it can prevent harm: the women’s grief does not stop the violence, yet their presence has a place in the scene.
THE ROOT
ἐκόπτοντο
ekoptonto
GROWS FROM
κοπ-
kop-
To strike, cut, or hew.
The verb behind “bewailed” carries the force of striking; in mourning, it can describe beating the breast. Its English gloss can make lament sound like a named feeling, while the Greek keeps the body’s blow inside the action.
ALSO GROWS
ekkoptō: To cut off or cut out.
ἐκκόπτω
The same root that gives mourning its striking force also carries the sense of cutting something away.
proskoptō: To strike against or stumble.
προσκόπτω
This branch preserves the root’s physical force: a strike can unsettle a body and make it stumble.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives grief a public, shared form around suffering and loss.
And all were weeping and beating their breasts for her, but he said, Do not weep, for she has not died, but is sleeping.And they wailed, and wept, and fasted until evening, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the LORD, and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.THE THREAD
And all were weeping and beating their breasts for her, but he said, Do not weep, for she has not died, but is sleeping.The Greek verb ἐκόπτοντο (ekoptonto, “bewailed”) appears in both verses, keeping the bodily force of mourning visible. The repeated word links grief following Jesus on the road with grief gathered around a child, where Jesus is present within the mourning.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us