What Does Matthew 22:25 Mean?

Now there were seven brothers with us, and the first, when he had married a wife, died, and having no seed, left his wife to his brother.

Matthew 22:25 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:

THE KEY

The Greek word translated “issue” means seed, so the verse pictures childlessness as a future that has not been sown.

THE MEANING

The first brother is dead without offspring, and his wife is left to his brother. The verse holds the absence of seed and the transfer of the marriage together, making family continuity the question beneath the scene.

THE ROOT

σπέρμα

sperma

GROWS FROM

σπείρω

speirō

to sow or scatter seed

The word translated “issue” is seed: the same image can name offspring and what is planted. The verse describes the first brother’s childlessness as an absence of seed, so family continuation appears as something that could take root and grow.

ALSO GROWS

speirō: to sow

σπείρω

The verb shows the action beneath the seed image: something is planted to produce what follows.

sporos: seed, that which is sown

σπόρος

This related noun keeps the link between offspring and planted seed visible.

THE PATTERN

Seed names the source through which life and a future emerge and continue.

And Onan knew that the seed would not be his, and whenever he went in to his brother's wife, he ruined it on the ground, lest he give seed to his brother.

Genesis 38:9 · SDVThe seed is explicitly tied to whether the brother’s line receives a future.

Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.

Galatians 6:7 · SDVSowing and reaping make the seed image a way to see how what is planted bears a later result.

Having been birthed again, not from seed that can be ruined but from what cannot be ruined, through the word of God, living and remaining for the ages.

1 Peter 1:23 · SDVBirth is described through seed, showing the image as the source from which life emerges.

THE THREAD

Another parable he laid beside them, saying, The governance of the heavens is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

Matthew 13:24 · SDV

Matthew uses the same word for the field’s seed that this verse uses for offspring. The shared image links a child’s continuation with what is planted and able to grow.

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