What Does Matthew 21:14 Mean?
And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
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 the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.THE KEY
The temple’s meaning appears in the people who enter impaired: they are met with healing care there.
THE MEANING
You can come near while your sight or movement is still impaired; wholeness is not an entrance fee. Here, the temple is the place where those needs meet care that restores.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that you must be whole before you can enter a sacred place is reversed: the blind and lame come to Jesus in the temple, and healing meets them there.
THE ROOT
ἐθεράπευσεν
etherapeusen
GROWS FROM
θεραπευ-
therapeu-
To attend to, serve, or care for; by extension, to heal.
“healed” in this verse is etherapeusen. The Greek verb carries the sense of attending to someone as well as healing them. The verse presents restoration as care given to people who come as they are, not as a prize for already being whole.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: Care, service, treatment, or healing.
θεραπεία
This related word keeps the care and treatment within what English renders simply as “healed.”
therapōn: An attendant or servant.
θεράπων
This related word names one who attends, revealing the personal care carried by the verb.
THE PATTERN
When impaired people reach a place of divine encounter, restoration opens sight, movement, and participation.
Then the eyes of the blind open, and the ears of the deaf open. Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain.The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD straightens the bent; the LORD loves the aligned.And leaping up, he stood and walked, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.THE THREAD
The blind look up again, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are roused, and good news is carried to the emptied.Matthew 11:5 uses the same Greek words for “blind” and “lame” as this verse. It spells out the restoration compressed here into “he healed them”: the blind see, and the lame walk.
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