What Does Matthew 27:14 Mean?
He did not answer him with even one word, so that the governor was greatly amazed.
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 he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.THE KEY
The silence gives the governor no answer, yet it is the governor who is left astonished.
THE MEANING
When a demand for explanation presses in, silence can carry its own weight and unsettle the one expecting an answer. The verse holds open a moment in which authority does not control what is spoken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that silence under accusation means guilt or defeat; here, the governor is astonished by it.
THE ROOT
ἀπεκρίθη
apekrithē
GROWS FROM
κρίνω
krinō
To separate or distinguish; by extension, to decide or judge.
The Greek verb translated “answered” belongs to the same word family as κρίσις, “judgment,” while ἀπόκρισις means “answer.” English hides that the silence sits inside a judicial exchange: no verbal defense is given, and the governor himself is left astonished.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: Judgment; a decision.
κρίσις
This branch places the answer within a scene of judgment, where a response is expected but none comes.
apokrisis: An answer or response.
ἀπόκρισις
This noun names the kind of speech withheld here: not even one word is offered.
THE PATTERN
Silence under accusation can leave the demand for a defense unanswered and expose the limits of the one making it.
But I, like a deaf man, do not hear, and I am like a mute who does not open his mouth.He was pressed, and he was bowed low, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter, and like a ewe before her shearers he was mute, so he did not open his mouth.Who, when he was insulted, hurled no insult back; when he suffered, he threatened not; but handed himself over to the one who judges by alignment.THE THREAD
He was pressed, and he was bowed low, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter, and like a ewe before her shearers he was mute, so he did not open his mouth.Isaiah gives the silence in Matthew its shape: the oppressed one does not open his mouth under pressure. The governor’s astonishment makes that silence visible as a presence the demand for a defense cannot command.
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