What Does Luke 9:38 Mean?
And look, a man from the crowd cried out, saying, Master, I beg you, look upon my son, for he is my only son.
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, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child.THE KEY
The Greek word monogenēs holds both the father’s only child and the child’s singular place in his family in a single word.
THE MEANING
The father asks for his son to be seen and names him as his only child. The plea keeps the need bound to this one relationship, not an abstraction.
THE ROOT
μονογενής
monogenēs
GROWS FROM
μόνος + γένος (compound)
μόνος (monos) means only or alone; γένος (genos) means kind, family, stock, or offspring. Together they describe the one child in a family.
“only son” in this verse is monogenēs. The word holds singularity and kinship together: this is the father’s one child, whose distress is inseparable from their bond. Here the father’s brief phrase carries the full weight of whom he is pleading for.
ALSO GROWS
monos: only, alone
μόνος
It marks the child’s singular place in the father’s family.
genos: kind, family, stock, offspring
γένος
It ties that singularity to the child’s place within a family.
THE PATTERN
When scripture names a child as a parent’s only one, it makes the relationship inseparable from what is at stake.
And he said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go yourself to the land of Moriah, and raise him there as a rising offering upon one of the mountains I will tell you of."And Jephthah came to Mizpeh, to his house, and look, his daughter came out to meet him with hand drums and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter.For he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. But as he went, the crowds choked him.THE THREAD
For he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. But as he went, the crowds choked him.Luke uses the same word, monogenēs, for Jairus’s only daughter. The echo makes “only child” more than a family detail: in both pleas, the child’s singular place in a parent’s life is carried into the appeal.
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