What Does Matthew 5:47 Mean?
And if you embrace only your brothers, what do you do beyond others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?
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 if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?THE KEY
The “more” is love’s surplus: welcome becomes extraordinary when it crosses the boundary of who counts as your own.
THE MEANING
The reach of your greeting reveals whether welcome ends with shared identity or extends beyond it. Familiarity and reciprocity produce ordinary warmth; the verse asks what exceeds that familiar exchange. Even tax collectors greet their own.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that warmth toward your own circle is already extraordinary love dissolves here: the measure is whether welcome reaches beyond that circle.
THE ROOT
περισσὸν
perisson
GROWS FROM
περισσός
perissos
Beyond the ordinary; surplus or exceeding.
The Greek word for “more” belongs to the same word family as “exceed” in Matthew 5:20. The question is about the surplus that appears when love reaches beyond ordinary reciprocity.
ALSO GROWS
perisseuō: Abound, overflow, or exceed.
περισσεύω
This related verb makes the shared idea of going beyond the ordinary explicit.
perissoteron: More abundantly or to a greater degree.
περισσότερον
This comparative form shows the same word family describing an increase beyond what is usual.
ἀσπάσησθε
aspasēsthe
GROWS FROM
ἀσπάζομαι
aspazomai
To greet or welcome; in some uses, to embrace.
“embrace” in this verse is aspasēsthe. “Salute” can sound like a formal gesture, while this Greek word also carries the sense of welcoming someone. The verse turns that welcome into a measure of how far your regard reaches.
ALSO GROWS
aspasmos: A greeting or salutation.
ἀσπασμός
The related noun names the greeting itself, the everyday act whose reach the verse tests.
aspazomai: To greet or welcome.
ἀσπάζομαι
The verb’s range keeps the action personal: the issue is whom you receive with welcome.
ἀδελφούς
adelphous
GROWS FROM
δελφύς
delphys
Womb; ἀδελφός (adelphos) is traditionally understood as one born from the same womb.
“Your brethren” names the circle in which greeting feels natural. The word’s image of shared birth makes that circle a bond of common origin, even as the verse asks whether welcome stops there.
ALSO GROWS
adelphē: Sister.
ἀδελφή
The feminine form shares the same word family of sibling kinship.
adelphotēs: Brotherhood or kinship among siblings.
ἀδελφότης
This related noun extends the family bond from an individual brother to a community.
THE PATTERN
Love crosses the reciprocity line when it gives care beyond its own circle of kinship or return.
If you come upon your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering, you shall surely return it to him.If you love those who love you, what thanks is that to you? For even those who miss the mark love those who love them.So if your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink, for by doing this you will heap coals of fire upon his head.THE THREAD
For I say to you, unless your alignment overflows beyond that of the writers and of the separated ones, you will by no means enter the governance of the heavens.“More” here, περισσὸν (perisson, beyond the ordinary), shares its word family with “exceed” in this verse. That echo links surpassing alignment with welcome that reaches beyond ordinary reciprocity.
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