What Does Luke 23:4 Mean?
Then Pilate said to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.
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
Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.THE KEY
An accusation can surround a person without giving the examiner a cause to find in them.
THE MEANING
You can be surrounded by a charge without that charge becoming your nature; being accused does not itself prove guilt. The verse holds the accused before the judging power while the examiner finds no cause in him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assumption that a charge proves the accused is guilty: the accusation is present, but its cause is not found in the person.
THE ROOT
αἴτιον
aition
GROWS FROM
αἰτι-
aiti-
Cause, ground, or charge that makes someone answerable.
English “fault” can sound like a personal defect. The Greek word points toward what is causative or chargeable: Pilate finds no ground in this man that makes the accusation stick. The same word family can name cause, responsibility, and accusation, distinguishing the existence of a charge from its basis.
ALSO GROWS
aitia: A cause or reason; also a charge or accusation.
αἰτία
The charge can be spoken, but the word also asks what cause or ground supports it.
aitios: Responsible for something, or liable as its cause.
αἴτιος
This branch brings out the question beneath “fault”: whether anything in the person makes them answerable.
THE PATTERN
A charge can be spoken against someone without a cause being found in them.
They circle me with words of hatred, and they fight against me for nothing.Pilate said to him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Judeans, and said to them, I find no cause in him at all.Concerning whom, when the accusers stood up, they carried no charge of such painful things as I had supposed.THE THREAD
He said to them, You brought this man to me as one who turns the people away. And look, I, having sifted him before you, found no fault in this man concerning the things you accuse him of.The Greek family behind “fault” here also appears in Luke 23:14, where Pilate says he finds no cause in the man concerning the charges brought against him. The repeated word sharpens the gap between accusation and its ground: the charge is voiced, but no cause is found in the accused.
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