What Does Matthew 27:39 Mean?
Those passing by spoke evil against him, shaking their heads.
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 that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,THE KEY
The moving head turns contempt into a public gesture, and echoes the language of the suffering voice in Psalm 22.
THE MEANING
Reviling is not only spoken; it is acted out as the head’s motion makes rejection visible. The one suffering stands exposed while passersby move on, holding together the cruelty of ridicule and the casualness with which pain is dismissed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that many voices make a true verdict: the verse exposes their gesture as reviling, not evidence about the sufferer’s worth.
THE ROOT
κινοῦντες
kinountes
GROWS FROM
κιν-
Move or set in motion; shake.
“wagging” in this verse is kinountes. The verb names motion, not a private feeling: the reviling travels into the body as a visible shake of the head. Psalm 22:7 uses the same motion-and-head image beside laughter and scorn, so the gesture carries the vocabulary of lament as well as ridicule.
ALSO GROWS
kinēsis: movement; motion
κίνησις
This related noun is rendered “moving” in John 5:3; the word family can name the motion of water as well as the motion of a head.
kinētos: movable; capable of being moved
κινητός
This branch keeps the root’s sense of physical movement in view: “wagging” describes an enacted gesture, not just an inward attitude.
THE PATTERN
When suffering is met with contempt, mockery appears in both speech and gesture.
All who see me mock me; they open their lips, they shake the head.I too could speak as you do. If your living soul were in place of mine, I could bind words together against you, and shake my head at you.And those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads, and saying, Ah, you who would loosen the temple, and build it in three days,THE THREAD
All who see me mock me; they open their lips, they shake the head.Psalm 22:7 pairs scorn with a shaking head, using the same Greek motion-and-head language as Matthew. The gesture therefore carries the psalm’s language of suffering inside the scene of ridicule.
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