What Does Luke 7:5 Mean?
For he loves our nation, and he has built us a synagogue.
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
For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.THE KEY
His love takes the form of a house whose very name means a gathering.
THE MEANING
This verse presents love as affection made inhabitable: care becomes a durable place where a people gather. The Greek word “synagogue” carries the sense of being brought together, so the building’s purpose is folded into its name. His regard for the nation takes a form others can enter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that love is only an inward feeling: here, love becomes a place a community can enter.
THE ROOT
συναγωγή
synagōgē
GROWS FROM
συνάγω
synagō
To bring or gather together.
The word translated “synagogue” names a gathering and, by extension, the place where people gather. The verse’s focus is a building, but the word keeps its purpose inside the name: a space made for people to come together.
ALSO GROWS
synagō: To gather or bring together.
συνάγω
This verbal form makes the communal purpose inside “synagogue” visible.
synagōgē: A gathering or assembly; also the place where people assemble.
συναγωγή
The word holds the people and the place of gathering together.
οἰκοδόμησεν
oikodomēsen
GROWS FROM
οἶκος + δομέω (oikos + domeō)
House + build; to build a house, and by extension to build up.
“built” in this verse is oikodomēsen. The verb means to build, while its word-family also carries the sense of building up. Here, the construction gives the assembly a place; elsewhere, the same building language describes people being formed together.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: House or household.
οἶκος
The house element makes the physical, inhabitable character of the construction explicit.
oikodomē: Building; figuratively, edification or building up.
οἰκοδομή
This branch extends construction language to the strengthening and formation of people.
oikodomos: Builder.
οἰκοδόμος
The word-family keeps the maker of a structure connected to the act of building.
THE PATTERN
Care takes shape by building what sustains a community’s shared life.
Moreover, because I have delighted in the house of my God, I have from my own treasure, gold and silver, given to the house of my God, above all that I have set firm for the set-apart house.And they came, every one whose heart lifted him, and every one whom his breath made free-hearted, and they brought the LORD's lifted offering for the work of the tent of meeting, and for all its serving, and for the set-apart garments.Let each of us please the neighbor for the good, toward the building up.THE THREAD
In whom you also are built together into a place where God settles, through breath.Luke names a synagogue, a place where people gather, and says it is built for the community. Ephesians uses the same house-building word in a compound to describe people themselves being built together as God’s dwelling. The structure opens onto a living architecture of community.
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