What Does Luke 8:31 Mean?

And they urged him not to command them to go out into the bottomless deep.

Luke 8:31 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.

THE KEY

The beings who terrorize others still beg, because the deep is a destination they cannot refuse if Jesus commands it.

THE MEANING

Here the beings appeal to Jesus not to command their departure into the abyss. Their plea exposes a boundary around their power: they can beg, but they do not determine whether the command is given. The deep is a destination they fear, and its command belongs to him.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that destructive powers are beyond restraint breaks here: they plead with the one whose command can send them into the deep.

THE ROOT

ἄβυσσον

abysson

GROWS FROM

βαθ-

bath-

Depth; what lies far below, with the word here carrying the sense of a bottomless depth.

“bottomless deep” in this verse is abysson. The word carries more than the sense of a place far below: it names a depth conceived as bottomless. Here that depth is a destination the beings fear entering, not simply a measure of distance.

ALSO GROWS

bathos: Depth; profoundness.

βάθος

This branch names depth itself, showing the shared root beneath the abyss as both physical depth and profoundness.

bathys: Deep; profound.

βαθύς

This branch describes what extends far down, illuminating why the abyss is presented as a realm beyond ordinary reach.

THE PATTERN

The abyss is a real depth under authority: access, descent, and confinement are commanded, questioned, or sealed.

Have you entered the springs of the sea, or walked in the digging of the deep?

Job 38:16 · SDVThe question treats the sea’s depth as territory whose exploration marks the edge of human reach.

And the fifth messenger sounds, and I see a star that has fallen from heaven to the earth, and to him is given the key of the bottomless pit.

Revelation 9:1 · SDVThe key to the bottomless pit is given, placing access to the abyss under authority.

And he throws the dragon into the pit without floor, shuts him in, and presses a seal upon him, so that he leads the nations off the path no more until the thousand years are finished. After that he must be loosed for a little while.

Revelation 20:3 · SDVThe pit is shut and sealed around a power that deceives, showing that even its prisoner remains subject to limits.

THE THREAD

Or, who will go down into the deep to bring the Anointed One up from the dead?

Romans 10:7 · SDV

The same Greek word for the abyss appears here as in Luke, rendered “deep” in both verses. In Luke it is a destination the beings fear; in Romans it marks the depth imagined in a descent to bring Christ up.

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