What Does Matthew 17:4 Mean?
Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you want, let us make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
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 answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.THE KEY
Peter reaches to build a dwelling for the glory before him, while Scripture’s tent-word later names God’s presence dwelling among people.
THE MEANING
When glory feels too large to leave as an encounter, you reach for a place to house it. Peter’s word for “tabernacles” is tent-language: he imagines making a dwelling for what he sees. The verse holds that impulse in the open before the answer arrives.
THE ROOT
σκηνάς
skēnas
GROWS FROM
σκην-
Greek word family
Tent, booth, or temporary dwelling; the word family carries the image of a place where someone stays.
The English “tabernacles” can sound like formal religious structures, but the Greek keeps the concrete image of tents. This same word family later describes the Word dwelling among people, connecting a shelter Peter proposes to God’s own nearness.
ALSO GROWS
skēnoō: to dwell, pitch a tent, or tabernacle
σκηνόω
John uses this same word family for the Word dwelling among us, turning the tent image toward presence among people.
skēnopoios: tentmaker
σκηνοποιός
The word keeps the root’s ordinary, tangible sense: a tent is made as a shelter, not as a container for all that is present.
THE PATTERN
A shelter may mark where presence is encountered, but it cannot contain the one who dwells among people.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Yet the Highest does not settle in what is made by hands, as the prophet says.THE THREAD
And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.The Greek verb behind “dwelt” is σκηνόω (skēnoō), from the same σκην- word family as Peter’s σκηνή (skēnē), “tent” or “tabernacle.” Peter imagines making tents for the glory he sees; John uses the same tent-language for the Word’s dwelling among us.
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