What Does Matthew 13:34 Mean?
Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables, and he spoke nothing to them without a parable.
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
All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:THE KEY
A parable places an image beside its meaning, so the connection between them becomes part of the speech.
THE MEANING
Jesus speaks to the multitude through parables, and this verse addresses you now: meaning can arrive through an image set beside what it reveals. The story and its meaning stand together, and their relation becomes part of what you can see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that indirect speech must obscure truth: here, the parable is the form through which the teaching arrives.
THE ROOT
παραβολαῖς
parabolais
GROWS FROM
βαλ-
bal-
Throw, cast; in compounds, place alongside.
“parables” in this verse is parabolais. The Greek παραβολή (parabolē, “parable”) grows from the idea of placing one thing beside another. An image is set beside what it addresses, and meaning emerges in their relation, not only in a direct statement.
ALSO GROWS
ballō: throw, cast
βάλλω
This verb supplies the action beneath the word: something is cast or placed.
paraballō: place beside, compare
παραβάλλω
This compound makes the parable’s structure visible: one thing is set alongside another.
bolē: a throw, a casting
βολή
This related form shares the β-λ consonants, with a vowel shift, and carries the image of something cast alongside.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
Deliver, bring out from constriction.
The name Jesus carries the Hebrew name Yeshua, from the root of deliverance. Here the speaker’s name holds that nature even as his speech sets images beside what they disclose.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun uses the same root consonants to name the deliverance carried in the name.
hoshia: he delivered, brought out
הוֹשִׁיעַ
The same root appears as an act, giving the name’s nature the form of deliverance in motion.
THE PATTERN
Meaning can be disclosed through an image set beside what it addresses, with their relation carrying what direct statement leaves unpictured.
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 with many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they could hear it.THE THREAD
So that what was spoken through the prophet might be filled, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will pour forth what has been hidden from the laying down of the world.Matthew 13:35 repeats the Greek παραβολή (parabolē, “parable”) for speech that brings forth what has been kept secret. Its root sense of placing alongside makes the image a meeting point with what the reader perceives through it.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us