What Does Matthew 15:18 Mean?
But what comes out of the mouth comes forth from the heart, and that makes a person common.
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
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.THE KEY
The mouth is the exit, but the heart is the source, and what it sends out makes the person’s inner condition visible.
THE MEANING
What leaves your mouth comes from your heart and bears on your whole person. The mouth gives outward form to what is within; this verse locates defilement in what emerges from that inner source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person is made unclean only by what comes from outside: here, what comes out of the heart also matters.
THE ROOT
κοινοῖ
koinoi
GROWS FROM
κοιν
koin-
Common or shared; the verb means to make common, and in purity language, to render profane or defiled.
“makes a person common” in this verse is koinoi. The word translated “defile” belongs to the same word family as “common” and “sharing in common.” The verse describes what comes from the heart as changing the person’s condition, making the inner source visible in the person’s outward life.
ALSO GROWS
koinos: common, shared
κοινός
This is the root family’s basic sense, beneath the verse’s use of the verb for making someone defiled.
koinōnia: sharing in common, participation
κοινωνία
It shows the family’s wider movement from what is shared to what is made common.
ἐκπορευόμενα
ekporeuomena
GROWS FROM
πορευ
poreu-
To go or travel; with ἐκ (ek), “out,” the word means to go out or emerge.
The words are pictured as things going out from the heart, with the mouth as their point of emergence. English “proceed” can sound abstract; the Greek gives the verse a movement from an inner source into outward expression.
ALSO GROWS
poreuomai: go, travel
πορεύομαι
It supplies the sense of movement carried by the word for what proceeds from the heart.
poreia: journey, travel
πορεία
This related noun keeps the family’s sense of movement and passage in view.
THE PATTERN
What is held within a person flows outward through speech and reveals the inner source.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.Out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and curse. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.THE THREAD
A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.Luke uses the same Greek words for “heart” (καρδία, kardia) and “mouth” (στόμα, stoma), and makes their connection explicit: the mouth speaks from the heart’s abundance. Matthew names what that flow can do to the person; Luke shows the inner store from which it comes.
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