What Does Matthew 13:7 Mean?
And some fell among thorns, and the thorns climbed up and choked them.
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 some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:THE KEY
The seed is present, yet what grows beside it can suffocate it.
THE MEANING
The word is present in you while other growth rises in the same ground. As that growth closes around it, the word is choked before it can bear fruit. This is suffocation by coexistence, not absence of seed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Receiving the word guarantees fruit, whatever else grows alongside it.
THE ROOT
ἔπνιξαν
epnixan
GROWS FROM
πνίγω
To choke or suffocate.
“choked” in this verse is epnixan. The Greek verb πνίγω (pnigō), meaning to choke or suffocate, returns in the next verse as συμπνίγω (sympnigō). That shared root connects the thorns’ choking of the seed to the crowding pressure that leaves the word unfruitful.
ALSO GROWS
sympnigō: To choke or suffocate by pressing in.
συμπνίγω
Matthew 13:22 uses this compound for how the cares of this age and wealth’s deception choke the word.
apopnigō: To choke or drown.
ἀποπνίγω
This related form keeps the image of life cut off by suffocation, showing the severity held in the root.
THE PATTERN
Thorn growth turns ground meant for life into a field where fruit is crowded out.
Thorns also and thistles shall it sprout for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field.But what bears thorns and thistles fails the test, and is near a curse; its end is the burning.And the one sown among thorns is the one who hears the word; and the care of this age and the deceit of riches choke the word, and he becomes without fruit.THE THREAD
Those who fell among the thorns are the ones who hear, and as they go on their way, they are choked by cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to ripeness.Luke uses the same Greek root in a compounded form and names cares, riches, and pleasures as what chokes the seed. The root links the thorns in this verse to the competing growth that fills the same life and leaves the word without fruit.
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