What Does Luke 23:56 Mean?
And they turned back, and readied spices and ointments, and were still on the sabbath, according to the command.
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 returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.THE KEY
The women’s rest is not the opposite of care: preparation and commanded quiet belong to the same act of tending.
THE MEANING
Your care can move from preparation into quiet without becoming neglect. The women prepare the spices and ointments, then rest within the commandment; what they have prepared is held through the pause.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that stopping means care has been abandoned: their preparations remain while they keep the Sabbath.
THE ROOT
ἡσύχασαν
hēsychasan
GROWS FROM
ἡσυχ
ἡσυχ (hēsych) means quiet or stillness.
“were still” in this verse is hēsychasan. The verb is a form of ἡσυχάζω (hēsychazō), to be quiet or rest. “Rested” here carries the sense of entering quiet: the women’s Sabbath pause follows their preparations and gives their care a stillness within the commandment.
ALSO GROWS
hēsychazō: To be quiet, keep still, or rest.
ἡσυχάζω
This is the verb family of ἡσύχασαν; it presents rest as entering quiet.
hēsychia: Quietness or stillness.
ἡσυχία
This noun names the quiet the women enter when they rest on the Sabbath.
hēsychios: Quiet or tranquil.
ἡσύχιος
This related adjective carries the same quality of quiet into a person’s way of being.
THE PATTERN
Sabbath quiet holds a boundary around care: activity can be completed, then held within a set-apart pause.
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.And to aim at keeping quiet, to tend what is your own, and to work with your own hands, just as we charged you.THE THREAD
When they heard these things, they fell silent, and gave weight to God, saying, Then God has also given to the Gentiles the turning unto life.“Held their peace” translates the same Greek verb, ἡσύχασαν (hēsychasan), used here for “rested.” In both verses, quiet marks a pause in which what has happened is allowed to stand.
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