What Does Matthew 16:6 Mean?
Then Jesus said to them, Perceive, and hold yourselves back from the leaven of the separated ones and of the Sadducees.
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
Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.THE KEY
The danger is a teaching that works quietly through the whole before its influence is easy to see.
THE MEANING
A teaching can enter as a small idea and quietly shape the reader’s whole field of perception. Jesus’ paired commands to look and attend place the hidden process itself at the center of the warning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A teaching that looks small or remains unseen cannot reshape the whole.
THE ROOT
ζύμη
zymē
GROWS FROM
ζυμ
ζυμ (zym): leaven, ferment; the agent and process by which dough rises.
“leaven” in this verse is zymē. The Greek word family holds both the substance and the fermenting process in view. The warning reaches beyond what is visible to an influence already working through the whole.
ALSO GROWS
zymoō: to leaven, ferment
ζυμόω
This verb names leaven’s action: the influence spreads through what it enters.
azymos: unleavened
ἄζυμος
The same ζυμ consonants remain in the word for what has not been leavened, showing the contrast between dough that is affected and dough that is not.
προσέχετε
prosechete
GROWS FROM
ἔχω
ἔχω (echō): hold, have.
“hold yourselves back” in this verse is prosechete. The command translated “beware” is προσέχω, formed with the sense of holding toward something. Attention is pictured as directed and sustained, just as the leaven’s influence quietly works through what receives it.
ALSO GROWS
echō: to have, hold
ἔχω
This is the base verb within προσέχω and gives the command its image of holding attention toward something.
katechō: to hold fast, retain
κατέχω
This compound shares the ἔχω root and extends the image of something being held in place.
synechō: to hold together, constrain
συνέχω
This compound also carries ἔχω, showing how what is held can press upon or bind what it surrounds.
THE PATTERN
A hidden influence can spread through and alter the whole it enters.
Dead flies make the perfumer's oil stink; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and weight.Another parable he spoke to them. The governance of the heavens is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until all of it had risen.Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?THE THREAD
Another parable he spoke to them. The governance of the heavens is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until all of it had risen.The Greek ζύμη (zymē, leaven) appears in both verses. This parable shows the same permeating process at work in an image of the kingdom, revealing that the warning concerns what the influence carries, while the word itself names its quiet reach.
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