What Does Matthew 2:21 Mean?
And he rose and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
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 arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.THE KEY
The verse makes arrival part of deliverance: the child and his mother are carried all the way into a place where they can belong.
THE MEANING
The child and his mother come into the land of Israel; their movement has a destination. For you, release from danger is not the whole movement: life can also be brought into a place where it can stand and take root.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that escape alone completes deliverance falls away; the verse gives the movement a destination, and arrival is part of the rescue.
THE ROOT
ἐγερθείς
eger-theis
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
to rouse, awaken, or raise up
“arose” in this verse is eger-theis. The same root carries waking and rising, so this is movement stirred into life, not merely a change of place. What rises can now carry the child and his mother toward arrival.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: to awaken, rouse, or raise
ἐγείρω
The same verb joins waking with rising, opening the movement here as a response into life.
egersis: a rising or resurrection
ἔγερσις
This noun makes the root’s movement from being raised to rising visible.
παρέλαβεν
parelaben
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω
lambanō
to take or receive
“took” in this verse is parelaben. The verb carries the sense of taking someone along or receiving them. The child and his mother are not left behind as the journey continues; they are gathered into its movement.
ALSO GROWS
lambanō: to take or receive
λαμβάνω
This base verb shows the receiving held inside the act of taking them along.
antilambanomai: to take hold of, support, or help
ἀντιλαμβάνομαι
This related form carries taking hold into support, illuminating the care involved in bringing the vulnerable along.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance completes its movement when those carried out of danger arrive somewhere they can belong.
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.He leads them along the straight way, so that they go to a city to settle in.Who has brought us out of the authority of darkness and has moved us into the governance of the Son of his love.THE THREAD
When they had withdrawn, look, a messenger of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Rise, take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to make him perish.The same paired verbs appear here as a command: rise and take the child and his mother. This verse shows that movement reaching its destination, with those entrusted to the journey still gathered along.
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