What Does Luke 23:46 Mean?
And when Jesus had cried out with a great voice, he said, Father, into your hands I set down my breath. And having said this, he breathed out.
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 when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.THE KEY
The “spirit” entrusted to the Father and the “ghost” given up are one breath in Greek, the verse joins trust and death in a single exhalation.
THE MEANING
You hear Jesus entrust his breath into the Father’s hands with a loud cry; then he releases it in death. Trust here includes the body’s final breath: what he places in the Father’s care is what he exhales.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that entrusting oneself to God means leaving bodily vulnerability behind: the breath entrusted is the breath released in death.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pnéō
Breathe or blow.
The KJV gives one Greek breath-family two names here: “spirit” and “gave up the ghost.” The breath entrusted is the breath exhaled, so the verse holds trust and bodily death together.
ALSO GROWS
pnéō: Breathe or blow.
πνέω
This is the verb-family behind the breath entrusted to the Father.
ekpnéō: Breathe out; expire.
ἐκπνέω
Luke’s final verb belongs to the same breath-family, showing that the entrusted breath is released in Jesus’s death.
παρατίθεμαι
paratíthemai
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
títhēmi
Put, place, or set.
“set down” in this verse is paratíthemai. The verb translated “commend” carries the sense of placing something into another’s care. Its root joins entrusting with placing: the breath is set into the Father’s hands.
ALSO GROWS
títhēmi: Put, place, or set.
τίθημι
The base verb makes the act of entrusting concrete: Jesus places his breath in the Father’s care.
parathḗkē: A deposit or something entrusted.
παραθήκη
This related word names what has been committed to another’s keeping, echoing the breath placed in the Father’s hands.
THE PATTERN
The breath that gives embodied life can be entrusted back into God’s keeping.
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.Into your hand I place my breath; you ransom me, O LORD, God of truth.And they stoned Stephen, calling out and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my breath.THE THREAD
And they stoned Stephen, calling out and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my breath.The shared Greek word is πνεῦμα (pneuma), meaning breath; it names what Stephen asks Jesus to receive and what Jesus entrusts here. Luke’s final exhalation makes clear that the entrusted breath is also the life released in death.
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