What Does Matthew 24:20 Mean?
Pray that your flight does not come to be in winter, nor on the Sabbath.
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
But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:THE KEY
The verse holds escape and its conditions together: a way out can still be made harder by when it comes.
THE MEANING
When escape is necessary, the circumstances around it still matter. The verse speaks of flight through a particular season and day, holding the need to get out together with the conditions through which that movement must pass.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once a way out appears, the conditions surrounding escape no longer matter.
THE ROOT
φυγή
phygē
GROWS FROM
φυγ-
to flee, escape, or get away
The Greek word names flight as movement out of danger, not an abstract idea of deliverance. Its word family keeps the fleeing person and the act of escape joined together.
ALSO GROWS
pheugō: flee, escape
φεύγω
The verb names the movement contained in the noun flight.
phygas: fugitive, one who has fled
φυγάς
This word names the person defined by that same movement out.
χειμῶνος
cheimōnos
GROWS FROM
χειμ-
winter, the storm season
Winter names a real condition through which flight may have to pass. The same word family also speaks of being buffeted by storm, bringing the exposed quality of that season into view without turning it into a metaphor.
ALSO GROWS
cheimōn: winter; storm
χειμών
The dictionary form holds both the season named in the verse and its stormy weather sense.
cheimazō: be buffeted by a storm; pass the winter
χειμάζω
This verb shows the word family extending from the season to what a person undergoes in it.
σαββάτῳ
sabbatō
GROWS FROM
σαββατ-
Sabbath, a day of cessation or rest; a Greek borrowing from Hebrew שַׁבָּת (shabbat)
“Sabbath day” in this verse is sabbatō. The verse places urgent flight beside a day marked by cessation. Their pairing lets the reader feel the tension between necessary movement and the conditions surrounding it.
ALSO GROWS
sabbatismos: Sabbath rest
σαββατισμός
This related noun preserves the Sabbath’s association with rest and cessation.
sabbatizō: keep the Sabbath
σαββατίζω
This verb carries the Sabbath word into an act shaped by that day’s observance.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance takes place through concrete conditions, so the path out and the circumstances of its passage belong together.
Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.And pray that your fleeing does not fall in the winter.No test has seized you except what is common to humankind. God is steady, and he will not let you be tested beyond what you are able to carry, but with the test he will also make the way out, so that you can carry it.THE THREAD
And pray that your fleeing does not fall in the winter.Mark uses the same Greek word, φυγή (phygē, flight), keeping the escape itself in focus. Matthew names both winter and the Sabbath day, showing how the conditions around that movement matter.
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