What Does Matthew 20:10 Mean?
But when the first came, they supposed they would receive more, and they likewise each received a denarius.
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
But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.THE KEY
The workers receive what they were promised, yet another’s generosity makes their portion feel like a loss.
THE MEANING
You can receive what you expected and still feel shortchanged when someone else receives the same. The word translated “supposed” belongs to a Greek word family connected with custom and established practice: an expectation can feel like a rule before it is ever confirmed. Comparison turns another person’s portion into a measure of your own.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is: “If someone else receives generosity, I have been given less.”
THE ROOT
νομίζω
nomizō
GROWS FROM
νόμος
nomos
custom, law, or what is established by practice
“supposed” in this verse is nomizō. The workers’ “supposing” carries an echo of what seems customary or established: they expect that receiving more follows from being first. The same word family reaches from an assumed norm to νόμισμα, a coin or currency whose value is accepted in use; here, both expectation and payment are being measured by what people take to count.
ALSO GROWS
nomos: law, custom, established practice
νόμος
An expectation can take on the force of a rule even when no greater payment was promised.
nomisma: coin, currency accepted in use
νόμισμα
The word family links what people assume to be the norm with the accepted value of money.
THE PATTERN
When another person’s good fortune becomes the measure, generosity is felt as injury.
But he answered and said to his father, "Look, all these years I have slaved for you, and I have never stepped past your command, and yet you never gave me a young goat, so that I might be glad with my friends.But it was great harm to Jonah, and he burned.Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with what is mine? Is your eye sore because I am good?THE THREAD
But supposing him to be among the company, they went a day along the road, and sought him among their kin and acquaintances.“Supposing” here translates the same Greek verb, νομίζω (nomizō), as “supposed” in Matthew. In Luke, an assumption is treated as fact; in Matthew, an expectation of more feels settled before the payment arrives.
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