What Does Matthew 26:22 Mean?
And they were exceedingly pained, and each one of them began to say to him, Lord, is it I?
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 they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?THE KEY
The possibility of betrayal does not send them searching for a culprit; it makes each one ask whether it lives in him.
THE MEANING
Grief moves through the room, and each person turns the possibility toward himself: “Lord, is it I?” Trust is shaken, but no answer is yet known. The question speaks now wherever betrayal can no longer be assumed to belong only to someone else.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the easy certainty that the failure must belong to somebody else: every one asks, “Is it I?”
THE ROOT
περίλυποι
perilypoi
GROWS FROM
λυπ-
lyp-
Grief, sorrow, pain
“exceeding sorrowful” in this verse is perilypoi. The compound joins peri-, meaning “around” or “about,” with the word for grief; it can picture sorrow pressing all around them. This same Greek word appears when Jesus names his own anguish, linking their sorrow to his.
ALSO GROWS
lypē: grief, sorrow
λύπη
This noun names the grief held in the adjective describing the disciples.
lypeō: to grieve or cause sorrow
λυπέω
The verb shows the same root moving from sorrow as a state to the experience of grieving.
THE PATTERN
A hidden condition is brought into view by turning the question inward before assigning guilt outward.
Probe me, O God, and perceive my heart; test me, and perceive my burning thoughts.But let a man test himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.THE THREAD
Then he said to them, My living soul is pained all around, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.Matthew uses the same Greek word, perilypos, when Jesus names his own anguish. The disciples’ sorrow and Jesus’ sorrow share a word, though Jesus names its depth as reaching unto death.
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