What Does Matthew 25:27 Mean?
You ought, then, to have put my silver with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received what is mine along with its offspring.
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
Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.THE KEY
The word for “usury” also means offspring: the verse pictures entrusted value as something capable of giving birth to more.
THE MEANING
Here, fear cannot make entrusted value inert in the explanation: even the servant’s own account leaves a path for it to produce a return. The verse exposes the distance between calling the master severe and taking no step that might have yielded anything.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that fear makes inaction neutral; the servant’s own reasoning shows that leaving the money unused still has a cost.
THE ROOT
τόκος
tokos
GROWS FROM
τικ-/τεκ- (from τίκτω)
To bear, bring forth, or give birth.
“along with its offspring” in this verse is tokos. The word τόκος means both interest and offspring, and comes from τίκτω, “to bear.” The verse therefore pictures interest as money’s offspring: what is entrusted can bring forth something beyond its original measure.
ALSO GROWS
tiktō: To bear or give birth.
τίκτω
It is the verb behind τόκος, revealing the image of a return as something brought forth.
teknon: Child or offspring.
τέκνον
This related word carries the same birth image, making the verse’s financial return sound like generation.
THE PATTERN
What is received carries the possibility of bringing forth more when it is put into motion.
And God said, "Let the earth sprout green growth, the seed-bearing plant, and the fruit tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth." And it was so.But the one sown on good soil is the one who hears the word and puts it together, who also bears fruit and brings forth, one a hundredfold, another sixty, another thirty.I planted, Apollos gave to drink, but God made it grow.THE THREAD
Why then did you not put my silver upon the table, so that when I came I might have collected what was mine with its offspring?"Luke’s parallel uses the same word, τόκος (tokos), for “usury,” preserving the image of a return as offspring. That shared word makes the expectation more than bookkeeping: the entrusted amount is meant to bring forth beyond itself.
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