What Does Matthew 19:4 Mean?
And he answered and said to them, Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female?
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 he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,THE KEY
English repeats “made,” but Jesus’ sentence first names the Creator and then names male and female as the form of the making.
THE MEANING
Your embodied life belongs to a creation whose source comes before the distinction this verse names. Male and female appear as distinct forms within one act of making, so difference and shared origin stand together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that male and female have separate origins: it places both within one act of creation.
THE ROOT
κτίσας
ktísas
GROWS FROM
κτίζω
ktízō
to create, to bring into being
“the one who created them” in this verse is ktísas. The first “made” is κτίσας (ktísas), from κτίζω (ktízō, “create, bring into being”); the second is ἐποίησεν (epoiēsen), from ποιέω (poieō, “make, do”). English repeats one verb, while Greek first names the Creator and then names the male-and-female form as what is made.
ALSO GROWS
ktísis: creation; creature
κτίσις
This branch carries the creating act into the creation that results from it.
ktísma: a created thing
κτίσμα
It keeps attention on what comes into being through the Creator’s act.
ἐποίησεν
epoiēsen
GROWS FROM
ποιέω
poieō
to do, to make, to bring about
This verb also grows into words for a made thing and its maker or doer. The male-and-female phrase names the form of the making, while the first verb names the Creator; the sentence links them without using one Greek verb for both.
ALSO GROWS
poíēma: a thing made; workmanship
ποίημα
It shows the root can name the result of making, as the verse names male and female within creation.
poiētḗs: maker; doer
ποιητής
It shows the same root can name the one who makes, echoing the Creator named in the sentence.
THE PATTERN
Human difference is named within a shared act and source of creation.
And God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.Male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name the ground-being, Adam, in the day when they were created.Yet neither is the man apart from the woman, nor the woman apart from the man, in the Lord.THE THREAD
And God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.Genesis 1:27’s KJV says “created,” but the Greek rendering uses ποιέω (poieō, “make, do”), the same verb Matthew uses for its second “made.” The shared root ties both passages to the same act: male and female are named within what God makes.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us