What Does Luke 4:29 Mean?
And they rose up and threw him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, so that they might throw him down the cliff.
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 rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.THE KEY
The crowd first throws Jesus out of its shared space, then tries to throw him out of life.
THE MEANING
The crowd refuses to leave its judgment at words: it drives Jesus from the city and takes him to the cliff to kill him. Exclusion becomes physical violence, moving from outside the community to over its edge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that pushing someone outside a community is harmless is undone here: the crowd’s expulsion is part of an attempt to kill him.
THE ROOT
ἐξέβαλον
exebalon
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
To throw or cast.
“threw him out” in this verse is exebalon. ἐξέβαλον (exebalon) is a form of ἐκβάλλω (ekballō, “throw out” or “drive out”), built on βάλλω (ballō, “throw”). The movement then sharpens into κατακρημνίσαι (katakremnisai, “hurl down a precipice”): rejection moves from the city’s outside to the edge of death.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: Throw out; drive out.
ἐκβάλλω
This is the verb behind the crowd’s first act: Jesus is physically expelled from the city.
bolē: A throwing or cast.
βολή
This related form preserves the force of the movement: the crowd’s rejection is enacted physically.
THE PATTERN
Across scripture, a crowd’s act of casting someone outside becomes the path to violence against that person.
And two men, sons of Belial, came in and settled before him, and the men of Belial bore witness against him, even against Naboth, before the people, saying, Naboth blessed God and the king. Then they brought him out of the city, and stoned him with stones, and he died.And they seized him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.And they threw him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man called Saul.THE THREAD
And they threw him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man called Saul.Both verses use ἐκβάλλω (ekballō, “throw out”) and the phrase “outside the city.” In each, expulsion is joined to a lethal assault: the crowd tries to hurl Jesus from the height, while Stephen is stoned.
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