What Does Matthew 13:10 Mean?
And the learners came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables?
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 the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?THE KEY
A parable places an image beside a truth, so the disciples’ “why?” asks what the comparison is doing.
THE MEANING
You stand in the learners’ place, close enough to the teaching to ask why it comes as a parable. The verse leaves the question open, making the form of the teaching itself part of what is being learned.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief that asking why a teaching comes indirectly means you have failed to understand it loosens here: the disciples themselves ask.
THE ROOT
παραβολαῖς
parabolaîs
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
to throw, cast, or place; in παραβολή, the image is placed alongside what it helps express
“parables” in this verse is parabolaîs. The Greek noun παραβολή (parabolē, “comparison; parable”) carries the sense of placing one thing beside another. The learners’ question notices not only the story but the way the teaching is being given: the comparison itself invites inquiry.
ALSO GROWS
ballō: throw, cast, place
βάλλω
This is the verbal root behind the image of putting one thing alongside another.
parabállō: place beside, compare
παραβάλλω
This related verb makes the comparison visible: the parable sets an image beside a teaching.
μαθηταί
mathētai
GROWS FROM
μαθ-
math-
to learn, come to understand
The Greek word μαθηταί (mathētai, “learners; disciples”) belongs to the word family of learning. Their question is part of that posture: they are learning by asking how the teaching works.
ALSO GROWS
mathētēs: learner, disciple
μαθητής
The word names someone through their relation to learning, which gives the disciples’ question its fitting place.
mathēma: lesson, what is learned
μάθημα
The lesson and the learner share the same word family; here the learners ask about the form their lesson takes.
THE PATTERN
A comparison can hold a teaching beside an image, inviting the hearer to seek how they belong together.
I will open my mouth in a likeness, and pour out riddles of old.Son of man, put forth a riddle, and speak a likeness to the house of Israel.And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.THE THREAD
And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.The same Greek noun, παραβολή (parabolē, “comparison; parable”), appears in both verses. Mark makes the learners’ inquiry explicit: they ask about the very comparison Matthew’s verse shows them noticing.
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