What Does Matthew 5:42 Mean?
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wishes to borrow from you.
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
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.THE KEY
The verse names refusal as a turning away: the request concerns not only what leaves your hand, but whether you turn away from the person asking.
THE MEANING
A request meets you as a person, not an abstraction. The verse holds open both an immediate gift and a loan, and describes turning away as the response withheld. Need stays visible when it reaches you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that refusal is only a neutral decision about property: the verse also names it as turning away from the person who asks.
THE ROOT
ἀποστραφῇς
apostraphēs
GROWS FROM
στρέφω
strephō
To turn or twist. In the verse, ἀπό (apo, away from) gives the turning its direction: away from the one asking.
“do not turn away” in this verse is apostraphēs. English can make this sound like simply declining a loan, but the Greek verb pictures a turn away. The request brings another person into view; the response named here is about whether that encounter is turned aside.
ALSO GROWS
apostrephō: Turn away or turn back.
ἀποστρέφω
This is the verb family behind the verse’s warning: refusal is pictured as a change in direction away from the asker.
epistrephō: Turn back or return.
ἐπιστρέφω
This related form shows the same root can describe turning back toward something; the verse’s wording makes the direction of the turn matter.
THE PATTERN
When need reaches across the distance between people, the response is framed as giving rather than turning away.
But you shall open your hand wide to him, and you shall surely lend him enough for what he lacks.All the day long he craves a craving, but the aligned one gives and does not hold back.And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?THE THREAD
Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours, do not demand it back.Luke repeats the same Greek verbs for “give” and “ask,” joining the request directly to the response. The parallel widens the picture: the encounter is not reduced to protecting what is yours.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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