What Does Matthew 17:11 Mean?
And Jesus answered and said to them, Elijah indeed comes first, and will set all things back in place.
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 Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.THE KEY
Elijah’s coming is described as restoring what has been displaced, not introducing an unrelated reality.
THE MEANING
Elijah’s coming is presented as the movement that restores all things. The word carries the sense of setting something back in place, so restoration reaches beyond one isolated repair. The verse holds that return to order as what comes first.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What is broken is beyond repair and can only be replaced.
THE ROOT
ἀποκαταστήσει
apokatastēsei
GROWS FROM
ἀποκαθίστημι
apokathistēmi
To restore or set back into place.
“set back in place” in this verse is apokatastēsei. The verb is ἀποκαθίστημι (apokathistēmi, restore), built on καθίστημι (kathistēmi, set or place). Its noun ἀποκατάστασις (apokatastasis, restoration) appears in Acts 3:21 beside the same phrase “all things,” giving this promise the shape of a comprehensive setting back in place.
ALSO GROWS
apokatastasis: Restoration; restitution.
ἀποκατάστασις
Acts 3:21 uses this related noun for the “restitution of all things,” echoing the scope of the restoration promised here.
kathistēmi: Set, place, appoint.
καθίστημι
This verb forms the base of the compound: the promise is expressed as setting things back into place.
THE PATTERN
Restoration brings what has been disordered back into right relation.
And he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.And he will go before him in the breath and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers toward the children, and the unpersuaded toward the mind of the aligned, to make ready a people fitted for the LORD.Whom the heaven must take in until the times of setting upright again of all things, which God has spoken through the mouth of his set-apart prophets from the ages.THE THREAD
Whom the heaven must take in until the times of setting upright again of all things, which God has spoken through the mouth of his set-apart prophets from the ages.“Restitution” translates ἀποκατάστασις (apokatastasis, restoration), a noun from the same word family as “restore” here. The shared phrase “all things” makes the connection especially direct: both verses describe restoration with a comprehensive scope.
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