What Does Matthew 13:35 Mean?
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.
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
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.THE KEY
A parable places an image beside what has been hidden until the hidden thing can be heard.
THE MEANING
What has been concealed since the world’s foundation comes into speech through parables: the visible image gives the hidden thing a shape the ear can receive. Revelation is not a truth manufactured when it is spoken; it is what was hidden becoming speakable now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what is hidden must be absent or unreachable gives way: concealment can precede disclosure.
THE ROOT
κεκρυμμένα
kekrymmena
GROWS FROM
κρύπτω
kryptō
to hide or conceal, to keep out of sight
The Greek names things that have been concealed, not a vague mystery without substance. The same root appears in words for what is hidden away, linking concealment with the possibility of later disclosure.
ALSO GROWS
kryptos: hidden, concealed
κρυπτός
This branch keeps the sense of something real that remains out of view.
apokryptō: to hide away, conceal
ἀποκρύπτω
Its compound form carries the same root into the idea of something kept concealed.
παραβολαῖς
parabolais
GROWS FROM
παραβάλλω (paraballō), from παρά (para) + βάλλω (ballō)
to place or cast beside
“parables” in this verse is parabolais. A parable is a placing-beside: an image stands alongside what is hidden, and their relation brings it into view. The form of the speech is part of the unveiling, the concealed meaning appears through comparison.
ALSO GROWS
paraballō: to place beside, compare
παραβάλλω
It shows how a parable makes meaning perceptible by setting one thing alongside another.
parabolē: comparison, parable
παραβολή
This is the word’s noun form: the image placed beside the hidden meaning.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom hidden from view becomes hearable when truth is placed beside an image.
I will open my mouth in a likeness, and pour out riddles of old.He answered and said to them, Because it has been given to you to know the closed things of the governance of the heavens, but to them it has not been given.But we speak the wisdom of God in a sealed thing, even the hidden wisdom, which God marked out before the ages to clothe us in weight.THE THREAD
The mystery that has been hidden away from the ages and from the generations, but now has been made visible to his set-apart ones.The word for what has been hidden here shares its root with Colossians’ description of a mystery hidden through ages and now made manifest. Together, the verses show concealment giving way to disclosure, while Matthew reveals the parable as the form that brings the hidden into speech.
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