What Does Matthew 1:13 Mean?
And Zerubbabel brought forth Abiud, and Abiud brought forth Eliakim, and Eliakim brought forth Azor.
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 Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;THE KEY
The repeated “begat” makes every name a hinge: each life is received from another, then becomes a source for the next.
THE MEANING
Your life arrives through links you did not create; you are not a self-originating name. The repeated begetting shows how a received life also becomes a source, so continuity moves through distinct people without erasing their names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that your life begins with you, or that receiving makes you only passive, is undone here: each person in the chain becomes a source of life for another.
THE ROOT
ἐγέννησεν
egennēsen
GROWS FROM
γενν-
Beget; bring forth as offspring.
The repeated verb makes each name a hinge: each person is brought forth and then becomes a source of further life. The root’s branches for being born and being born anew show that the one brought forth and the act of bringing forth belong to the same word-family.
ALSO GROWS
gennētos: Born; begotten.
γεννητός
The same doubled-nu stem names one who has been brought forth, linking the person to the act that produces them.
anagennáō: Beget again; cause to be born anew.
ἀναγεννάω
This compound carries the same root into renewed birth, showing that the language of bringing forth can name both descent and a new beginning.
THE PATTERN
Life and what gives it shape move forward through received links, as each recipient can become a source for others.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.And the women who were her neighbors called out a name for him, saying, A son is born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.And these things you heard from me among many witnesses, place beside steady people who will be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.John uses the same γεννάω word-family for being born from God. Matthew makes descent visible through a line of begetting; John shows that birth language also names an origin in God, opening the idea beyond bloodline.
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