What Does Matthew 23:35 Mean?
So that upon you may come all the aligned blood poured out upon the earth, from the blood of the aligned Abel to the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
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
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.THE KEY
The blood of Abel and Zacharias does not remain two separate losses; it becomes one witness that comes upon those who keep the violence going.
THE MEANING
Abel’s blood and Zacharias’s blood stand together as one witness: violence against the aligned does not disappear when the victim is gone. The accumulated blood comes upon those who continue the violence, even when they act between sacred things. The verse places the reader within that reckoning now, where reverence cannot make spilled life vanish.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that a victim’s death closes the account, or that violence becomes clean when it happens beside an altar.
THE ROOT
αἵματος
haimatos
GROWS FROM
αἱματ- (haimat-), the stem of αἷμα (haima)
Blood: the embodied substance that can also name bloodshed.
The Greek word family keeps blood close to both the act of spilling it and the body’s ongoing flow of it. In the Hebrew Abel scene, dām (דָּם, dam, blood) cries from adamāh (אֲדָמָה, adamah, ground); their shared D-M sounds bind spilled life to the ground that holds its witness.
ALSO GROWS
haimatekchysia: bloodshed, the pouring out of blood
αἱματεκχυσία
This related word names the violent act implicit in “blood shed,” so the verse presents blood as the witness of an act, not merely a substance.
haimorrhoeō: to suffer a flow of blood
αἱμορροέω
Matthew uses this same blood family for the woman with an ongoing flow of blood (Matthew 9:20), keeping the word bodily and concrete.
δικαίου
dikaiou
GROWS FROM
δικ-
dik-
Justice and rightness; the state of being aligned with what is right.
The word for “righteous” belongs to a family that names justice and rightness. Calling Abel and Zacharias righteous marks the victims as aligned with what is right, making their murder a breach of that order.
ALSO GROWS
dikaiosynē: alignment, righteousness
δικαιοσύνη
This noun shares the same word family; the verse names both slain people as aligned with what is right.
dikaioō: to justify, declare righteous
δικαιόω
This verb carries the family’s sense of judgment toward what is right, clarifying why the victims’ blood remains an account that comes upon their killers.
THE PATTERN
Violence against the innocent persists as a witness and returns as accountability.
And the LORD said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.And they cry out with a great voice, saying, How long, Set-Apart and true Master, will you not judge and avenge our blood against those who settle upon the earth?THE THREAD
And the LORD said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.Matthew’s Greek word names blood; Genesis calls Abel’s blood dām (דָּם, dam, blood) and places it beside adamāh (אֲדָמָה, adamah, ground), with a shared D-M sound echo. Abel’s blood cries from the ground in Genesis, so Matthew’s “upon you” carries forward the image of a witness that rises from the earth and returns upon those responsible.
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