What Does Luke 6:18 Mean?
And those crowded by unclean breaths were healed.
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 that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed.THE KEY
The same word, πνεῦμα (pneuma: breath, wind, spirit), names the unclean spirits, while the sentence keeps the harassed people distinct as those who are healed.
THE MEANING
When you are troubled by what the verse calls unclean spirits, the affliction is named as what vexes you; it is not made your identity. The verse holds the distress and the healing together, naming you as the one who receives healing care. It leaves the mechanism mysterious.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what torments you is what you are, and therefore you cannot be healed. The verse distinguishes the people from what vexes them and names them as those who are healed.
THE ROOT
πνευμάτων
pneumatōn
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pneō
to breathe, blow
“breaths” in this verse is pneumatōn. The word rendered “spirits” belongs to the same word family as breath and wind. The verse still calls these spirits unclean and says they trouble people; the shared word adds depth without explaining away the affliction.
ALSO GROWS
pneuma: breath, wind, spirit
πνεῦμα
The verse uses this word for the unclean spirits, carrying the wider breath-and-wind sense within the English “spirits.”
pnoē: breath, a blowing
πνοή
This branch makes visible the same breath-and-blowing word family that English translations divide into different terms.
ἐθεραπεύοντο
etherapeuonto
GROWS FROM
θεραπεύω
therapeuō
to attend to, care for; to heal
English “healed” foregrounds the result, while this word family also carries the sense of attending to and caring for. The people are named as recipients of that healing care, though the verse does not describe its mechanism.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: care, service, healing
θεραπεία
This branch keeps the attentive-care dimension close to the verse’s word for healing.
therapōn: attendant, servant
θεράπων
This related word shows the family’s connection to attending to another, illuminating the care carried within “healed.”
THE PATTERN
Healing reaches people through their distress without making the distress their identity.
He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.And certain women, who had been healed of harmful breaths and weaknesses, Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,And the sound of him went out through all Syria, and they carried to him all who were ill, held by many-colored sicknesses and torments, and those gripped by demons, and those struck by the moon, and those who were paralyzed, and he healed them.THE THREAD
And the sound of him went out through all Syria, and they carried to him all who were ill, held by many-colored sicknesses and torments, and those gripped by demons, and those struck by the moon, and those who were paralyzed, and he healed them.The Greek θεραπεύω (therapeuō: attend to, care for, heal) appears in both verses. Matthew uses it across sickness, torment, and spirit-affliction, showing the same healing care reaching people through different forms of distress.
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