What Does Luke 8:3 Mean?
And Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who served him from what was theirs.
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 Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.THE KEY
The women’s resources are not separate from Jesus’ ministry: the same verb names their service and the service Jesus embodies.
THE MEANING
What belongs to Joanna, Susanna, and the others becomes part of the service sustaining Jesus. Their material means are not outside the work; they are one way it takes shape. The verse holds practical support and ministry together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that ministry belongs only to the person speaking or traveling: those who sustain him from their means are ministering too.
THE ROOT
διηκόνουν
diēkonoun
GROWS FROM
διακονέω
diakoneō
to serve or attend to another’s needs
“ministered” in this verse is diēkonoun. The verb for the women’s service belongs to the same word family as service itself and the person who serves. Their support is not incidental to the work; it is service taking material form.
ALSO GROWS
diakonia: service, ministry
διακονία
The related noun names service as a form of work, showing that what the women do is ministry in its own right.
diakonos: servant, attendant
διάκονος
The related word names the one who serves; the women’s action places them within that same pattern of service.
THE PATTERN
Service takes material form when what people possess becomes available to meet another’s need.
Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him and served him, and many other women who had gone up with him to Jerusalem.For none among them lacked, for as many as owned fields or houses sold them and carried the prices of what was sold,For this serving, this work of the people, not only fills up the lack of the set-apart ones, but also overflows through many thanks to God.THE THREAD
For who is greater, the one reclining at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one reclining? But I am among you as the one serving.Luke uses the same verb family for the women who minister to Jesus and for Jesus’ own description of himself as the one who serves. Their support belongs to the very form of service he embodies.
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