What Does Luke 23:45 Mean?
And the sun was darkened, and the hanging curtain of the temple was torn down the middle.
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 the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.THE KEY
The veil is split through its middle, where the boundary itself gives way.
THE MEANING
The sun is darkened, and the temple veil is torn at its center. Obscurity and rupture occupy the same moment: the boundary dividing the inner sanctuary is no longer intact. The verse speaks now of a division that can give way even while darkness remains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the boundary around what is sacred must remain closed: here, the veil itself is torn.
THE ROOT
ἐσχίσθη
eschisthē
GROWS FROM
σχίζω
schizō
to split, cleave, or tear
“torn” in this verse is eschisthē. The verb translated “rent” comes from σχίζω (schizō), “to split or tear.” Its branch σχίσμα (schisma), “a split or division,” gives English “schism”: the same root names both the veil’s physical rupture and the divided state a tear creates.
ALSO GROWS
schisma: a split, tear, or division
σχίσμα
This branch shows that the verb’s tear can name a lasting division; the veil’s rupture is a break in the boundary itself.
schistos: split, cleft, or divided
σχιστός
This branch describes something marked by a split, bringing the veil’s changed state into view.
THE PATTERN
The veil establishes a boundary, and its tearing turns that dividing line into a passage.
And you shall hang up the veil under the taches, so that you may bring in there, within the veil, the ark of the testimony; and the veil shall divide for you between the set-apart place and the most set-apart place.And look, the hanging curtain of the temple was torn in two, from above to below, and the earth shook, and the rocks broke open.A fresh and living way that he opened anew for us through the hanging curtain of his flesh;THE THREAD
A fresh and living way that he opened anew for us through the hanging curtain of his flesh;Luke shows the temple veil split at its middle; Hebrews speaks of a way through the veil and identifies it with his flesh. The torn boundary opens as passage through a person, not merely as damage to a curtain.
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