What Does Matthew 26:9 Mean?
For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.
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
For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.THE KEY
The sentence turns perfume into a price, then that price into a possible gift, showing how a real concern for the poor can also become the measure used to judge a gift.
THE MEANING
The verse sets out a chain of possibility: this costly substance becomes money, and money reaches people in need. That care is real, yet the surrounding exchange asks whether a gift loses its worth whenever another good use can be imagined. The reader sees how a sound appeal can still narrow the meaning of generosity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A valuable gift is not automatically waste because it could be sold for charity; the surrounding words challenge the belief that the most measurable use is always the truest one.
THE ROOT
πτωχοῖς
ptōchois
GROWS FROM
πτωχ-
The family is associated with πτώσσω (ptōssō), meaning to crouch or cower; πτωχός (ptōchos) means a poor person or beggar.
English “poor” can sound like a broad category; πτωχός (ptōchos), “a poor or begging person,” carries the posture of someone dependent on help. The line’s imagined gift points toward people with material need, not an abstract symbol in an argument.
ALSO GROWS
ptōcheia: poverty, destitution
πτωχεία
The related noun names the condition the proposed gift could relieve.
ptōcheuō: to be poor, live in poverty
πτωχεύω
This verb keeps the word family connected to an experienced condition of need.
δοθῆναι
dothēnai
GROWS FROM
δο-/δω-
δίδωμι (didōmi) means to give; δοθῆναι (dothēnai) means to be given.
The clause carries two successive acts: the ointment can be sold, then the proceeds given. The verb makes the transfer to those in need the proposed endpoint, not merely the imagined price.
ALSO GROWS
dosis: giving, gift
δόσις
This related noun names the act of giving that the verse proposes.
dōrea: gift, free gift
δωρεά
The gift word keeps attention on what passes from one hand to another.
THE PATTERN
Scripture measures wealth by its capacity to become provision for those who lack it.
For the one in want shall never be gone from the midst of the land. Therefore I command you, saying, "You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to the one in want and to the bowed down, in your land."Whoever lends to the LORD shows favor to the emptied one, and what his hands have done, he makes whole for him.and set them down at the feet of the sent ones, and it was given out to each as anyone had need.THE THREAD
For you have the poor always with you; but me you have not always.πτωχοῖς (ptōchois, “poor people”) here and πτωχοὺς (ptōchous, “poor people”) there are forms of the same word, linking the proposed sale to an enduring human need. The next verse also holds open the briefness of the present moment, so care for the poor and this particular gift cannot be reduced to one interchangeable measure.
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