What Does Matthew 2:3 Mean?
When Herod the king heard these things, he was shaken, and all Jerusalem with him.
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
When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.THE KEY
The king’s disturbance does not stay with him; it fills a whole city whose name carries wholeness.
THE MEANING
A ruler’s alarm becomes a shared atmosphere: all Jerusalem is troubled with him. The city’s name carries the language of wholeness, and the verse holds that wholeness beside disturbance spreading through the people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a ruler’s fear stays private is undone: a whole city can carry the disturbance with him.
THE ROOT
ἐταράχθη
etarachthē
GROWS FROM
ταρασσ-
tarass-
to stir, agitate, unsettle
“shaken” in this verse is etarachthē. The word pictures more than private worry: it is agitation that can spread through its surroundings. Here the same disturbance named in the king is shared by all Jerusalem.
ALSO GROWS
tarassō: to stir, agitate, trouble
ταράσσω
This is the verb family behind the king’s being troubled.
tarachos: commotion, disturbance
τάραχος
This related noun names a disturbance among a group, echoing how the king’s alarm reaches the city.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
to be whole, complete
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries the sh-l-m family of wholeness, with a dual form that evokes two wholenesses. The verse places that name beside a city caught in collective disturbance, keeping wholeness visible even when it is obscured.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
The city’s name carries the same language of wholeness that stands in contrast with its disturbance.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the wholeness carried in the name explicit, even as the city shares the king’s alarm.
THE PATTERN
Public alarm can spread until a whole people or city carries it.
And some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. And Saul was still in Gilgal, and all the people walked after him in trembling.And in every province, wherever the king's word and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.And they led them before the commanders, saying, These men, being Jews, stir our city exceedingly.THE THREAD
And they led them before the commanders, saying, These men, being Jews, stir our city exceedingly.Matthew’s “troubled” is ἐταράχθη (etarachthē), from ταράσσω (tarassō, to agitate); Acts uses a compound of that same verb for troubling a city. The shared root shows how agitation at one point can become the condition of a whole city.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us