What Does Matthew 22:17 Mean?
Tell us therefore, What do you think? Is it lawful to give the tax to Caesar, or not?
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
Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?THE KEY
The question asks whether to “give,” but Jesus later answers with the same root plus apo-, “give back,” shifting the test toward what is due.
THE MEANING
A question that sounds like a neutral request for a rule can already narrow the frame to a yes-or-no choice. Here the Greek verb is simply “to give”; Jesus’ later reply turns the same giving-root toward rendering what is due. Beneath the question of permission sits another question: who gets to define the claim?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A clean yes-or-no question is not necessarily neutral; its wording can place the answerer inside someone else’s frame.
THE ROOT
δοῦναι
doûnai
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
To give, grant, or bestow. The form here is “to give,” without a prefix meaning “back.”
The question uses the plain giving-verb. In Matthew 22:21, Jesus answers with ἀποδίδωμι (apodídōmi), “render” or “pay back,” adding a sense of returning what is due. The shift keeps the same root while changing the question from whether one may give to what is owed.
ALSO GROWS
apodídōmi: Give back, repay, render
ἀποδίδωμι
Jesus uses this compound in Matthew 22:21; the added apo- gives the shared giving-root the sense of rendering what is due.
paradídōmi: Hand over, deliver
παραδίδωμι
The same giving-root can describe a transfer into another’s hands, showing how a prefix shapes the kind of giving.
metadídōmi: Share, impart
μεταδίδωμι
The same root also describes sharing something with another; English words for giving, handing over, and sharing can hide their common seed.
THE PATTERN
A claim about what is due reveals the authority a voice assumes over what belongs.
A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.Therefore give back to all what is owed; the carried to whom the carrying is owed, the toll to whom the toll is owed, the trembling to whom trembling is owed, the weight to whom weight is owed.THE THREAD
They said to him, Caesar's. Then he said to them, Give back therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.Matthew 22:17 uses δοῦναι (doûnai), from δίδωμι (didōmi, “give”); in this answer Jesus uses ἀπόδοτε (apódote), from ἀποδίδωμι (apodídōmi, “render” or “pay back”). The added apo- turns the exchange toward what is due, bringing the claim behind the trap into view.
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