What Does Luke 5:30 Mean?
And the separated ones and their scribes muttered against his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and those who miss the mark?
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
But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?THE KEY
The question shows how a label of missing turns a shared meal into a test of who is allowed to belong.
THE MEANING
The question casts the disciples’ shared meal with tax collectors and people marked by missing as a problem. It exposes reputation working as a border around belonging, as though a person’s missing determines who may sit near them. That same border appears whenever someone’s failure becomes their whole social name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person’s missing makes shared presence with them improper.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτωλῶν
hamartōlōn
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
to miss, to miss the mark
“those who miss the mark” in this verse is hamartōlōn. The Greek word translated “sinners” shares its seed with hamartia, the missing or missed mark. English can make the label sound like a fixed identity; the shared root keeps the action of missing audible within it.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: to miss, fail, or do wrong
ἁμαρτάνω
The same seed can describe an act of missing, not only a category of person.
hamartia: missing, missing the mark
ἁμαρτία
This cognate carries the image beneath the label used to mark the people at the table.
hamartēma: an error or failure
ἁμάρτημα
It keeps the idea of missing connected to something that occurs, rather than a separate kind of human nature.
ἐγόγγυζον
egongyzon
GROWS FROM
γογγύζω
gogguzō
to mutter or grumble
“muttered” in this verse is egongyzon. The accusation is carried by a word for grumbling, so its challenge comes wrapped in dissatisfaction. The root keeps the atmosphere of judgment inside the question: the meal is treated as a grievance before its reason is spoken.
ALSO GROWS
goggysmos: murmuring or grumbling
γογγυσμός
The related noun names the same kind of complaint that frames the question.
goggystēs: a grumbler
γογγυστής
This branch shows the same seed describing the person who voices the complaint.
THE PATTERN
Shared meals expose the boundaries a community draws around belonging.
And in this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines kept on their lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines kept on their lees, well strained.And he said to them, You know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to cling to, or come near, one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.For before some came from James, he ate together with the nations. But when they came, he drew back and marked himself off, fearing those from the circumcision.THE THREAD
I have not come to call the aligned, but those who miss the mark into turning.The same Greek word for “sinners” recurs here and in the accusation. Jesus names the people at the table as those he calls, placing them within a movement of turning rather than making their label the end of their story.
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