What Does Luke 7:15 Mean?
And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother.
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 that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.THE KEY
The Greek says Jesus “gave” the son to his mother: the resurrection’s final movement is a person returned to relationship.
THE MEANING
Life’s return is not abstract here: the man sits upright, speaks, and is restored to his mother’s care. His voice and his place with her return together, making restoration bodily and relational at once.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The scene undoes the claim that death has left this son forever beyond return: he is alive, speaking, and back with his mother.
THE ROOT
ἔδωκεν
edōken
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
to give, grant, or place into someone’s hands
The verb translated “delivered” also carries the plain sense “gave.” Jesus gives the living son into his mother’s care; the giving makes the restoration a return to their relationship, not just a change in the son’s condition.
ALSO GROWS
paradidōmi: hand over, deliver
παραδίδωμι
This compound makes the hand-to-hand sense of giving explicit, echoing the son’s return to his mother.
apodidōmi: give back, return, repay
ἀποδίδωμι
This compound’s sense of giving back illuminates the scene’s movement: the son is returned to the relationship death had interrupted.
THE PATTERN
In these restorations, life becomes visible through a person’s return to bodily presence and human relationship.
And Elijah took the child, and brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, See, your son lives.And her breath turned back, and she stood up at once, and he commanded that she be given food.And he gave her his hand and stood her up, and calling the set-apart ones and the widows, he stood her beside them, alive.THE THREAD
And her breath turned back, and she stood up at once, and he commanded that she be given food.Both scenes use a form of δίδωμι (didōmi), “to give”: the son is given to his mother, and the girl is given food. The shared verb opens restoration as a return to relationship and care.
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