What Does Matthew 15:23 Mean?
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.
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 he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.THE KEY
The disciples turn her audible persistence into their case for dismissal: what signals need to her becomes a nuisance to them.
THE MEANING
Her cry reaches the people around Jesus, and Jesus gives her no answer yet. The disciples treat the sound itself as a reason to send her away, making her need, in their telling, a disturbance to remove. The verse leaves Jesus’ silence unexplained.
THE ROOT
ἀπόλυσον
apolyson
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, release, or untie.
“Send her away” in this verse is apolyson. The verb can carry the sense of dismissing someone or releasing them. Here, the disciples ask for a release that means separation from their presence; the same word family also reaches toward release that frees.
ALSO GROWS
apolysis: Release or dismissal.
ἀπόλυσις
This related word makes the dismissal sense explicit: the disciples want her removed from the scene.
lytron: Ransom, a price paid for release.
λύτρον
The same release family can describe freedom from bondage, revealing the tension between sending someone away and setting someone free.
THE PATTERN
A cry remains urgent even when silence or opposition meets it.
O LORD, how long shall I cry out, and you will not hear and respond? I cry out to you of violence, and you will not deliver.Many rebuked him, telling him to hush, but he cried out all the more, Son of David, have compassion on me.THE THREAD
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.The disciples use the same Greek command for “send away” when they bring Jesus the crowd’s need for food. Here, the request is to send away a woman whose cry has reached them; in both scenes, need is framed as something to move elsewhere.
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