What Does Matthew 17:23 Mean?
They will strike him down, and on the third day he will be raised. And they were greatly pained.
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 they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.THE KEY
The verb for being raised also means being awakened, so death is named as real without becoming the last word.
THE MEANING
This verse holds the killing and the raising together: violence reaches him, but it does not finish the story. The promise is specific, he is raised on the third day, and the disciples’ grief remains real, becoming overwhelming as they hear it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death has the final word over him.
THE ROOT
ἐγερθήσεται
egerthēsetai
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω (egeirō), stem ἐγερ- (eger-)
To rouse, awaken, or raise.
The same verb can describe waking someone from sleep and raising the dead, so “raised” carries the image of awakening. The passive follows “they shall kill him”: those who inflict death do not determine what happens next.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: To awaken or rouse; also, to raise from the dead.
ἐγείρω
The verb gathers waking and resurrection into one image, opening up more than a return to a previous state.
egersis: A raising or resurrection.
ἔγερσις
This related noun appears in Matthew 27:53, linking the verb’s picture of being raised with resurrection.
THE PATTERN
In Scripture’s resurrection pattern, death is real but does not hold the last action; the dead are raised into life.
Your dead will live; together with my corpse they will rise. Awake and ring out, you who camp in the dust, for your dew is a dew of lights, and the earth will drop the slackened ones.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.And that he was buried, and that he has been awakened on the third day according to the writings.THE THREAD
Jesus answered and said to them, Unbind this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.Both verses use ἐγείρω (egeirō, “rouse” or “raise”). Matthew puts the raising in the passive; here Jesus says, “I will raise it up,” making the shared verb’s action explicit.
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