What Does Luke 9:14 Mean?
For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Have them recline in groups of fifty.
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 they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company.THE KEY
The “companies” are not merely crowd-control units: their name comes from reclining, so the multitude is already arranged as diners before the food is handed out.
THE MEANING
A multitude of need becomes people with places at a meal. Here, receiving begins as each group is gathered and seated; the food has not yet been distributed, but the crowd is no longer shapeless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that an overwhelming need makes people impossible to hold in view gives way: each group has a place at the meal.
THE ROOT
κλισίας
klisías
GROWS FROM
κλίνω
klínō
to lean, bend, or recline
“recline” in this verse is klisías. The KJV’s “company” translates a word for a group of diners, related to reclining. The verse therefore pictures more than a crowd divided by number: people are arranged in meal-shaped groups, ready to receive together.
ALSO GROWS
kataklinō: to make someone recline at a meal
κατακλίνω
Luke 9:15 uses this related verb when the disciples make the people sit down, carrying the same meal-shaped arrangement into the next verse.
paraklinō: to make someone recline to eat
παρακλίνω
Luke 12:37 uses this related verb when the master seats his servants for a meal, showing the same root in an act of service.
THE PATTERN
A multitude becomes reachable when it is arranged into units that can be held and served.
Moreover, you shall look out from all the people for men of strength, who stand in awe of God, men of truth, who hate plunder; and set such over them as rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.And his attendant said, How shall I place this before a hundred men? He said again, Give to the people, that they may eat. For thus says the LORD, They shall eat, and some shall remain.And they fell back in garden plots, by hundreds and by fifties.THE THREAD
Flourishing are those servants whom the lord will find awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will gird himself, and have them recline, and come alongside and wait on them.The word for “company” here shares the κλίνω (klínō), “recline,” root with the verb translated “make them to sit down to meat.” Here the disciples prepare the crowd for a meal; in Luke 12:37, the master seats and serves the servants.
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