What Does Luke 9:61 Mean?
And another also said, Lord, I will follow you, but allow me first to go and take my leave of those at home in my house.
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 another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.THE KEY
He offers a real yes to following, but places one last departure from home before it.
THE MEANING
The sentence holds two motions at once: a present promise to follow and a request to leave home before that promise becomes movement. Attachment enters not as refusal, but as a condition placed ahead of the path.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that sincere intention has already crossed the threshold gives way here: “I will follow” and actually leaving still occupy different moments.
THE ROOT
ἀποτάξασθαι
apotaxasthai
GROWS FROM
τάσσω
To arrange, appoint, or set in order.
“take my leave” in this verse is apotaxasthai. The verb for “bid farewell” is built from apo- (“away, from”) and tassō, “arrange” or “set in order.” The goodbye carries the added sense of taking leave, making a separation, so the verse’s tension lies in the departure he asks to place before following.
ALSO GROWS
taxis: Order, arrangement.
τάξις
It shares the root sense of things being placed in order, echoing the sequence the speaker proposes: first a parting, then following.
diatassō: Arrange, direct, prescribe.
διατάσσω
This branch carries the sense of arranging what comes next, illuminating how the speaker places a leave-taking ahead of his promised movement.
THE PATTERN
A forward call exposes where attention remains when the old home is still within reach.
And he let go of the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, "Let me, please, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will walk after you." And he said to him, "Go, turn back, for what have I done to you?"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.Brothers, I do not count myself as having seized it. But this one thing I do, letting go of what lies behind and stretching out toward what lies ahead.THE THREAD
And Jesus said to him, No one who lays a hand to the plow and looks back is well placed for the governance of God.The next line turns the requested goodbye into the image of a plough: the work advances with the gaze directed forward. It makes the condition in verse 61 visible as a question of divided direction, not simply a spoken farewell.
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