What Does Matthew 14:15 Mean?
And when evening came, his disciples came near to him, saying, This is an empty place, and the hour has already passed; release the crowds, so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
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 when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.THE KEY
In “send the multitude away,” the Greek verb carries the sense of release, so dismissal is the disciples’ first proposed answer to hunger.
THE MEANING
When need grows visible and the hour feels late, distance can look like a solution: let the hungry leave and buy food on their own. The pressure here is to move the need away from the place where it is seen.
THE ROOT
ἀπόλυσον
apólyson
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
to loose, unbind, release
“release the crowds” in this verse is apólyson. The Greek verb behind “send away” joins dismissal with release: the crowd would be let go from the place where its hunger is being seen. That same verb-family can also describe a person being “loosed,” a connection English translations can make easy to miss.
ALSO GROWS
lýsis: loosening, release
λύσις
This noun carries the base root’s sense of loosening, revealing the release inside the proposed dismissal.
apólysis: release, dismissal
ἀπόλυσις
This related noun brings the release and dismissal senses together, illuminating the action proposed for the crowd.
THE PATTERN
When another person’s need presses into a group’s space, the first impulse can be to move that person away.
And Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of waters, and gave them to Hagar, setting them on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away. And she went and strayed in the wilderness of Beersheba.But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and asked him, saying, Send her away, for she cries out behind us.THE THREAD
Then the lord of that servant was stirred in his inward parts, and let him go, and released the debt.“Loosed him” translates a form of the same Greek verb used here for “send away.” There, the servant is loosed while a different verb describes the debt being forgiven; the shared verb lets the proposed dismissal here echo the release of a person elsewhere.
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