What Does Luke 4:11 Mean?
And they lift you up on their palms, lest your foot dash against a stone.
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 in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.THE KEY
The promise of being borne is turned into a dare to provoke the fall it promises to prevent.
THE MEANING
The image places hands beneath you before your foot meets stone: support meets vulnerability at the point of possible impact. In the surrounding exchange, the promise is used to urge a deliberate fall, exposing how protection can be turned into a demand for proof. Being borne is not the same as being licensed to create the danger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that protection makes deliberately staged danger harmless, or that care must prove itself by catching you.
THE ROOT
ἀροῦσίν
arousin
GROWS FROM
αἴρω
airō: lift, raise, carry; in other uses, take away or remove.
“lift you up” in this verse is arousin. The form ἀροῦσίν (arousin) comes from αἴρω (airō), whose range includes lifting, carrying, and taking away. English gives the upward motion, while the wider verb family also lets the action read as removal: the body is carried clear of the point of impact.
ALSO GROWS
epairō: lift up, raise
ἐπαίρω
This compound preserves αἴρω’s lifting action and makes the upward direction explicit, echoing “bear thee up.”
arsis: lifting, raising
ἄρσις
This noun from the same verb family names the lift itself, showing the action as carrying upward rather than simply avoiding a stone.
THE PATTERN
Care is pictured as hands or arms carrying a vulnerable body before a fall becomes injury.
Though he falls, he will not be hurled down, for the LORD props him up with his hand.Even to old age I AM, and to gray hair I will bear you. I have made, and I will lift, I will bear, and I will slip you free.And the Slanderer said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He will command his messengers concerning you, and upon their hands they will lift you up, lest you ever strike your foot against a stone.THE THREAD
The next day John perceived Jesus coming toward him, and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the falling short of the world.The Greek verb translated “bear thee up” here belongs to the same root as αἴρων (airōn), translated “taketh away” in John 1:29. The same word family joins lifting and carrying with taking away: here the body is borne clear of impact.
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