What Does Matthew 18:33 Mean?
Should you not also have shown compassion to your fellow servant, as I also showed compassion to you?
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
Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?THE KEY
The KJV’s “compassion” and “pity” are the same Greek verb: the mercy received and the mercy withheld are one thing.
THE MEANING
The mercy that meets you is the measure already present in your relation to another person. This verse exposes the contradiction of receiving pity while withholding it from someone carrying a debt of their own. The mercy shown to you reaches into that encounter now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that mercy can be received as a special exception while another person’s debt makes them undeserving of it.
THE ROOT
ἐλεῆσαι
eleēsai
GROWS FROM
ἐλεέω (eleeō), stem ἐλεε- (elee-)
To show mercy, take pity, or act compassionately.
“shown compassion” in this verse is eleēsai. The forms translated “have compassion” and “had pity” come from the same verb, so the sentence repeats one action on both sides. English gives that action two names; Greek connects the mercy received with the mercy withheld.
ALSO GROWS
eleos: Mercy, pity, compassion.
ἔλεος
The related noun names the same mercy as something given or received, not merely felt.
eleēmōn: Merciful; characterized by mercy.
ἐλεήμων
This related adjective describes a person by the same quality the verse expects to pass from one person to another.
THE PATTERN
Mercy received and mercy extended belong to one measure; withholding it exposes a break in that measure.
The LORD is compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, and abounding in faithful love.Flourishing are the givers of faithful love, for they are shown faithful love.For judgment will be without faithful love for the one who did not show such love, and faithful love boasts over judgment.THE THREAD
Then the lord of that servant was stirred in his inward parts, and let him go, and released the debt.The lord’s first response is compassion that ends in release and a forgiven debt. This verse brings that received act back as the measure the servant refuses to extend to his fellow servant.
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