What Does Matthew 21:10 Mean?
And when he came into Jerusalem, all the city was shaken, saying, Who is this?
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 when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?THE KEY
When Jesus enters the city named for wholeness, even the whole city shakes, and the question beneath that upheaval is: Who is this?
THE MEANING
Jesus’ presence unsettles what you call settled, and the question rises in the whole inner city: Who is this? The disturbance reaches the whole place, not just one private corner, and the verse leaves the question open as everything shakes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that wholeness must feel undisturbed; here, the arrival in the city named for wholeness comes with upheaval.
THE ROOT
ἐσείσθη
eseísthē
GROWS FROM
σεί-
sei-
To shake or agitate.
The Greek verb opens onto the language of an earthquake: the city is shaken, not merely interested. The English “moved” carries the disturbance, while the Greek also gives it a seismic force; the whole city becomes the setting for the question, “Who is this?”
ALSO GROWS
seismós: earthquake, shaking
σεισμός
This noun makes explicit the force carried by the verb describing the city’s response.
seiómena: things being shaken
σειόμενα
This form appears in the language of what can be shaken, extending the image from one startled city to what seems settled.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries the language of shalom, wholeness. The city’s shaking makes the question of who brings that wholeness immediate: the name and the disturbance meet in the same scene.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This branch brings the city’s name into the same field of meaning as the wholeness at stake in its upheaval.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This form shows the root’s sense of completeness beneath the name of the city being shaken.
THE PATTERN
The encounter with divine presence shakes what people take as settled and brings what is hidden into view.
And look, the hanging curtain of the temple was torn in two, from above to below, and the earth shook, and the rocks broke open.For thus says the LORD of hosts. Yet once more, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry ground.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
And look, the hanging curtain of the temple was torn in two, from above to below, and the earth shook, and the rocks broke open.Matthew uses the same Greek verb, σείω (seíō), for Jerusalem being “moved” and for the earth that “did quake” here. The shared root connects the city’s question at Jesus’ arrival with the shaking and torn veil at his death.
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