What Does Matthew 21:18 Mean?
Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he hungered.
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
Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.THE KEY
The Greek word for bodily hunger also names the longing for alignment, joining physical need and moral desire in one root.
THE MEANING
The verse lets you see a body in motion with its need still present. Hunger is named plainly in the middle of a return, without explanation or shame.
THE ROOT
ἐπείνασεν
epeinasen
GROWS FROM
πειν-
To hunger, to feel the need for food; the verb is πεινάω (peinaō), meaning “to be hungry.”
“hungered” in this verse is epeinasen. Here the word names bodily hunger; elsewhere the same verb describes longing for alignment. One root holds physical appetite and a desire for what is right, while the surrounding words show which kind of hunger is in view.
ALSO GROWS
peinōntes: People who are hungry or longing.
πεινῶντες
In Matthew 5:6, the same verb describes hunger for alignment, connecting this bodily need with a deeper longing.
peina: Hunger or the felt lack of food.
πεῖνα
This noun form makes the need explicit: hunger is a real lack, not merely a figure of speech.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses hunger for bodily need and for longing toward what brings fullness.
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.Flourishing are those who hunger and thirst for alignment, for they are filled.Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me shall never hunger, and the one who leans their full weight into me shall never thirst.THE THREAD
Flourishing are those who hunger and thirst for alignment, for they are filled.The word translated “hungered” here shares its Greek root with “do hunger” in this verse. There the appetite reaches beyond food toward alignment, and the shared word lets bodily need and moral longing illuminate one another.
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