What Does Matthew 24:39 Mean?
and they did not know until the flood came and lifted them all away, so is the presence of the Son of Man.
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 knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.THE KEY
Not knowing lasts only until the event arrives, and the Greek word for “coming” also carries the sense of presence.
THE MEANING
You can fail to recognize what is happening until it is already upon you. The verse sets the flood’s taking-away beside the arrival of the Son of Man, where the presence is known by its effects, not by prior recognition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what you fail to recognize cannot reach you.
THE ROOT
ἔγνωσαν
egnōsan
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω (ginōskō), from the γνο-/γνω- stem
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“knew not” in this verse is egnōsan. The people do not recognize what is happening until the flood arrives. This verb can describe recognition, so the verse holds more than missing information: awareness comes only when the event makes itself unmistakable.
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: knowledge
γνῶσις
This related noun shows the same word family expressing what is known.
epiginōskō: recognize, come to know
ἐπιγινώσκω
This related verb makes the recognition sense explicit, illuminating what fails to happen before the flood.
παρουσία
parousia
GROWS FROM
εἰμί (eimi), “to be,” in παρά + εἰμί
To be present; with παρά, to be present or arrive.
“Coming” also carries the sense of presence or arrival. The verse points to a presence whose reality is disclosed in the event itself.
ALSO GROWS
pareimi: be present, arrive
πάρειμι
This related verb gives the sense of becoming present within parousia.
parōn: present
παρών
This form describes someone as present, bringing out the state that the arrival establishes.
THE PATTERN
A decisive event can arrive while its time and meaning remain outside human recognition.
For humankind does not perceive its time. As fish are caught in an evil net, and as birds are caught in the snare, so humankind is caught in an evil time, when it falls upon them in a flash.They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and made them all perish.For you yourselves know exactly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.THE THREAD
He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, and the world did not perceive him.John uses the same verb, γινώσκω (ginōskō, to know or recognize), for the world’s failure to recognize someone present among it. The shared word shows that lack of recognition does not make a presence unreal.
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