What Does Luke 4:23 Mean?
And he said to them, Surely you will say this proverb to me, Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we have heard was done in Capernaum, do also here in your father's land.
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 he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.THE KEY
They turn a report from elsewhere into a performance owed on home ground.
THE MEANING
This verse names a demand that is alive now: what is heard happening elsewhere must be repeated here before it counts. Familiarity turns the physician’s work into something owed at home; hearing of Capernaum becomes a claim for the same display in his own country.
THE ROOT
πατρίδι
patridi
GROWS FROM
πατήρ
patēr
Father; the word family extends to paternal and ancestral belonging.
“father's land” in this verse is patridi. The word translated “country” is πατρίδι (patridi), a form of πατρίς (patris), meaning fatherland or native place, from the family of πατήρ (patēr), “father.” The demand is specifically made on ancestral ground, where familiarity is treated as a claim on the physician’s work.
ALSO GROWS
patris: Fatherland, native place
πατρίς
This is the noun behind the form translated “country,” keeping the sense of home and belonging inside the place.
patrikos: Paternal, ancestral
πατρικός
It echoes the inherited belonging that makes the hometown setting more than a location.
θεράπευσον
therapeuson
GROWS FROM
θεραπεύω
therapeuō
Attend to, care for, treat, or heal.
“heal” in this verse is therapeuson. The command θεράπευσον (therapeuson) carries the range of attending to, caring for, treating, and healing. Its word family keeps care and treatment close to healing, while the next clause shows that the demand is to repeat the work reported elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: Care, treatment, healing
θεραπεία
This related noun holds treatment and healing within the same family as the command.
therapeutēs: Attendant, one who serves or cares
θεραπευτής
This related word preserves the sense of attending to someone that can sit beneath “heal.”
ἰατρέ
iatre
GROWS FROM
ἰάομαι
iaomai
Heal or cure.
English makes “Physician, heal” sound like one word echoed back to itself. Greek uses ἰατρέ (iatre), from the ἰάομαι (iaomai) family, for “Physician,” then shifts to θεραπεύω (therapeuō) for “heal”: the title and requested act belong to distinct healing word families.
ALSO GROWS
iatros: Physician, healer
ἰατρός
This is the base noun behind the address “Physician.”
iasis: Healing, cure
ἴασις
This related noun names the healing associated with the physician’s craft.
THE PATTERN
When a report or familiar presence is treated as insufficient, people make immediate proof the condition of receiving it.
And he called the name of the place Massah, the testing, and Meribah, the striving, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, Is the LORD in our midst, or not?Then Jesus said to him, Unless you perceive signs and wonders, you will not trust.But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without weight, except in the land of his fathers, among those born alongside him, and in his own house.THE THREAD
And he said, Truly, I say to you, No prophet is welcome in his own father's land.The next verse names the local rejection behind the predicted demand. The proverb sounds as though it honors the physician, but it makes proof on home ground the price of being received.
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