What Does Matthew 23:30 Mean?
And you say, “If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been sharers with them in the blood of the prophets.”
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 say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.THE KEY
Declaring that you would have acted differently can preserve your bond to the very violence you disown.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes a claim of innocence built on an imagined past: “we would not have been partakers.” The word “partakers” makes the question one of shared participation, not just declared identity. The sentence speaks now wherever disavowing inherited harm sits beside a continuing share in its pattern.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that condemning the wrongdoing of those before you proves you are free of it; an imagined choice does not erase present participation.
THE ROOT
κοινωνοὶ
koinōnoi
GROWS FROM
κοιν-
koin-
Common; shared.
“sharers” in this verse is koinōnoi. The Greek word names people who share something in common. That makes the claim more than resemblance to the fathers: it concerns whether one is joined to what they did.
ALSO GROWS
koinōnia: Sharing in common.
κοινωνία
This branch makes the shared bond explicit: the sentence concerns what is held in common, even when someone says they stand apart.
koinōneō: To share or participate.
κοινωνέω
This branch points to participation as something enacted; a claim about what one would have done does not itself break a shared pattern.
THE PATTERN
A claim of distance from inherited violence is tested by whether the pattern continues in the present.
But they were contrary, and rebelled against you, and threw your instruction behind their backs, and killed your prophets, who testified against them to turn them back to you, and they wrought great spurnings.Which of the prophets did your fathers not pursue? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Aligned One, of whom you have now become the handers over and the blood-spillers.THE THREAD
Look at Israel according to the flesh. Are not those who eat the slain offerings sharers in common of the altar?“Partakers” translates the same Greek word family as “partakers” in Matthew: κοινωνός, a sharer. Here, eating from the sacrifices makes participation concrete, opening Matthew’s claim to a deeper question about what a person actually shares.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us