What Does Luke 6:11 Mean?
But they were filled with mindlessness, and they talked it through with one another about what they might do to Jesus.
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 were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus.THE KEY
Their madness is not a loss of planning but a loss of discernment: the mind stays busy while clear seeing disappears.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes a present danger: deliberate thought can serve a mind that has lost discernment. When another person becomes only the target of a plan, careful discussion does not make that plan clear-sighted. Calculation and understanding are not the same thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a plan becomes sound simply because it is deliberate and shared.
THE ROOT
ἀνοίας
anoías
GROWS FROM
νοῦς (nous), negated by ἀ- (a-)
Mind or understanding; with the negative prefix, the word names senselessness or a failure of sound judgment.
“mindlessness” in this verse is anoías. “Madness” can sound like overpowering emotion, but ἄνοια also carries the sense of folly or lack of understanding. The striking detail is that they still confer: planning continues even as discernment fails.
ALSO GROWS
nous: Mind, understanding.
νοῦς
It names the faculty whose failure gives ἄνοια its force.
diánoia: Thought, understanding, mind.
διάνοια
This related word names the activity of the mind; here, mental activity remains, but clear judgment is absent.
ποιήσαιεν
poiēsai
GROWS FROM
ποιέω
poieō
To do, make, or bring about.
The verb translated “do” can also mean “make”; they are discussing what act to bring about against Jesus. Luke uses the same verb at the cross, where Jesus says they do not know what they do.
ALSO GROWS
poiētēs: Maker, doer.
ποιητής
The word joins doing with the person who enacts it, sharpening the contrast between purposeful action and absent discernment.
poiēma: A thing made, a work.
ποίημα
It shows the verb’s sense of bringing something into being; in this verse, the contemplated act is still being formed in conversation.
THE PATTERN
When discernment collapses, destructive action can still feel like a reasoned path.
And Cain said to Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.Because, having known God, they did not give him weight as God, nor did they give thanks; but they were made empty in their reckonings, and their unjoined heart was darkened.THE THREAD
Then Jesus said, Father, release them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they parted his garments, and cast lots.Both verses use ποιέω (poieō, “do/make”) for what people do to Jesus. Here they deliberate over the act; at the cross, Jesus names their lack of knowing, joining their careful plotting to the failure of discernment this verse calls ἄνοια.
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