What Does Matthew 10:4 Mean?
Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also handed him over.
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
Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.THE KEY
The Greek word for “betrayed” means “hand over,” so treachery appears as the transfer of a person from one set of hands to another.
THE MEANING
A circle can hold both fervent commitment and betrayal; closeness to a trusted cause does not make a handover invisible. The act remains named beside the person who performs it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Belonging to a trusted circle proves that a person’s actions are trustworthy.
THE ROOT
παραδίδωμι
paradidōmi
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
to give; in compounds, to hand or give over
“handed over” in this verse is paradidōmi. The verb translated “betrayed” is built on δίδωμι (didōmi), “give”: παραδίδωμι means to give over or hand over. The word makes betrayal concrete as a transfer of a person into another’s hands.
ALSO GROWS
didōmi: to give
δίδωμι
This is the basic verb at the heart of the handover expressed by παραδίδωμι.
metadidōmi: to share or impart
μεταδίδωμι
This related verb shows the same giving family can describe passing something outward; here, the compound names handing Jesus over.
paradosis: something handed down or transmitted
παράδοσις
The related word retains the sense of something passed from one person to another, echoing the verse’s language of a handover.
שִׁמְעוֹן
Shim'on
GROWS FROM
שמע
to hear, listen, attend
Simon’s Hebrew name, Shim’on, belongs to שמע (shamaʿ), “hear.” The name carries listening beside Judas’s handover, placing two distinct ways of being in the same short list.
ALSO GROWS
shāmaʿ: to hear or listen
שָׁמַע
This is the verb at the root of Simon’s name and gives the name its sense of hearing.
shemuʿāh: a report or something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows hearing extending into what is received and carried as a report.
shōmēaʿ: a hearer or listener
שֹׁמֵעַ
This form makes the root’s action a quality of a person, as Simon’s name does.
THE PATTERN
Betrayal can take shape inside the closest circle, where shared identity or a shared table does not erase the act.
Even the man of my wholeness, upon whom I leaned my weight, eats my bread and lifts his heel against me.For the son sets the father at nothing, the daughter rises against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.I do not speak of all of you. I know whom I have chosen, but so that the writing may be filled, the one who chews my bread has lifted up his heel against me.THE THREAD
And said to them, What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you? And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.The verb translated “deliver” is παραδίδωμι (paradidōmi), the same verb translated “betrayed” in this verse. Here the handover takes the shape of an offer and a price, making the root’s concrete movement visible.
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