What Does Matthew 15:4 Mean?
For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and mother, and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother, let him end in death.
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
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.THE KEY
The verse sets the act of assigning parents worth beside a sentence of death for cursing them, making the bond both honored and violently guarded.
THE MEANING
God’s command names father and mother as worthy of honor, then states that whoever curses either is to die. The verse places a severe, explicit penalty beside honor; it does not soften the violence of that consequence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that contemptuous speech toward a parent is a trivial offense: this verse names it as deserving death.
THE ROOT
τιμᾷ
timā
GROWS FROM
τιμ-
The root τιμ- (tim-) expresses value or worth; τιμάω means to value or assign worth.
“Honour” in this verse is timā. The Greek verb frames honor as recognizing or assigning worth. Its branches connect honor with both value and preciousness, so the command describes a relationship given weight, not merely a polite title.
ALSO GROWS
timē: value, price, or honor
τιμή
This branch shows that honor carries the sense of recognizing what someone is worth.
timios: precious or costly
τίμιος
The same root describes what is valued as precious.
atimos: dishonored or held without honor
ἄτιμος
This opposite form makes visible what happens when worth is withheld.
מְקַלֵּל
məqallēl
GROWS FROM
קלל
The root קלל (qalal) conveys lightness or slightness; in this form it means to curse or treat with contempt.
“speaks evil of” in this verse is məqallēl. In the Hebrew line Matthew quotes, the curse verb comes from a root for being light or slight, so cursing carries the image of reducing a parent to insignificance. The quoted law places honor and contempt on opposite sides of a question of weight: a parent is treated as worthy or as negligible.
ALSO GROWS
qal: light or slight
קַל
This root sense helps disclose the contemptuous force beneath the word translated “curseth.”
qelalah: a curse or imprecation
קְלָלָה
This noun names the curse that the verse pairs with its severe consequence.
THE PATTERN
The text treats honoring parents as a life-weighted bond, pairing the command with a severe consequence for cursing and a promise of well-being for honoring.
And he who curses his father or his mother is surely put to death.Give weight to your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that your days may be lengthened, and so that it may be good for you, in the land that the LORD your God gives you.Give weight to your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise. That it may go well with you, and you may be long in days upon the earth.THE THREAD
And he who curses his father or his mother is surely put to death.This is the Torah sentence behind Matthew’s closing clause. Its Hebrew מְקַלֵּל (məqallēl, “cursing”) comes from קלל (qalal, “to be light”), casting the offense as making a parent insignificant; Matthew preserves the death sentence beside the command to honor.
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