What Does Luke 23:5 Mean?
But they grew stronger, saying, He shakes the people, teaching through all Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place.
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 were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.THE KEY
The charge that Jesus stirs the people uses the same Greek verb later used for the chief priests stirring the crowd against him.
THE MEANING
You hear the accusation intensify as Jesus’ teaching is said to move through all Judea, from Galilee to this place. The message’s reach is framed as agitation, revealing how teaching that moves among people can be treated as a threat. Yet the same verb is used for the chief priests stirring the crowd elsewhere, so the accusation does not settle who is moving whom.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A stirred crowd proves that the person accused is the source of its unrest.
THE ROOT
ἀνασείει
anaseíei
GROWS FROM
σείω
seíō
To shake, agitate, or set in motion.
“shakes” in this verse is anaseíei. The charge uses a word for shaking people into movement, not simply for teaching an idea. Its reach across Judea is presented as agitation, while the same verb elsewhere describes the chief priests moving the crowd.
ALSO GROWS
seíō: To shake or move.
σείω
The compound verb in this verse carries that image of people being set in motion.
seismós: A shaking or earthquake.
σεισμός
This related word makes the force of the root concrete: the language of agitation carries the sense of a disturbance that moves what seemed settled.
ἐπίσχυον
epískhyuon
GROWS FROM
ἰσχύω
ischýō
To be strong or prevail; here, to grow more forceful.
“grew stronger” in this verse is epískhyuon. The verb carries the sense of growing stronger or pressing harder, so the accusation intensifies as it is made. “More fierce” catches its force while the Greek also carries this increasing insistence.
ALSO GROWS
ischýs: Strength or might.
ἰσχύς
The noun makes visible the force that is increasing in the accusers’ claim.
ischyrós: Strong or powerful.
ἰσχυρός
This related adjective echoes the intensifying pressure behind their words.
THE PATTERN
The movement of teaching among people is called disorder or instruction depending on the voice that names it.
And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob. He will aim us in his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for the instruction shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.And when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and certain brothers to the rulers of the city, shouting, these who have turned the inhabited earth upside down are here also;But the chief priests shook the crowd, so that he would rather release Barabbas to them.THE THREAD
But the chief priests shook the crowd, so that he would rather release Barabbas to them.Mark uses the same Greek verb, ἀνασείω (anaseíō, “stir up”), that appears here: there it describes the chief priests moving the crowd to demand Barabbas. The shared root turns the accusation inside out, the same act of moving people is named on both sides of the conflict.
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