What Does Luke 8:4 Mean?
And when a great crowd gathered together and came to him from every city, he spoke in a parable.
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 when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable:THE KEY
A parable places truth beside ordinary life, so the crowd arriving from every city can meet meaning through an image.
THE MEANING
You are among many who come from different places, and Jesus speaks through a parable: a story set beside your life so its meaning can meet you there. The image is not separate from the world you know; it is where the word becomes visible.
THE ROOT
παραβολῆς
parabolēs
GROWS FROM
βάλλω (ballō, throw or cast), with παρά (para, beside)
βάλλω means to throw or cast; παρά means beside. Together they form the image of placing one thing beside another.
The Greek word for parable carries the picture of setting one thing alongside another. An everyday image stands beside the truth it reveals, so meaning comes through comparison rather than abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
paraballō: To set one thing alongside another.
παραβάλλω
This verb makes the parable’s underlying action clear: an image is set beside the meaning it carries.
ekballō: To throw or drive something away.
ἐκβάλλω
It shares βάλλω, the act of casting; the prefix changes the direction, while παρά in parable turns the image alongside its meaning.
THE PATTERN
A parable carries meaning by placing an image beside what it reveals.
I will open my mouth in a likeness, and pour out riddles of old.Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables, and he spoke nothing to them without a parable.And with many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they could hear it.THE THREAD
Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables, and he spoke nothing to them without a parable.Matthew uses the same Greek word, παραβολή (parabolē, “parable; comparison”), for this form of teaching. Beside Luke’s scene, it shows the gathered crowd meeting the word through images set alongside the life they know.
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