What Does Matthew 6:12 Mean?
And release our debts, as we also release our debtors.
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 forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.THE KEY
Forgiveness here is release: the prayer places letting go of what others owe alongside asking to be released ourselves.
THE MEANING
The prayer names wrongdoing as debt, a claim that can be released. The reader asks for that release while acknowledging the release extended to those who owe them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a claim must remain attached to the person who incurred it: a debt can be released without denying that it was owed.
THE ROOT
ἄφες
aphes
GROWS FROM
ἀφίημι
aphiēmi
To send away, leave, or release.
The Greek verb translated “forgive” carries the sense of letting go or sending away. The prayer uses this same verb for the release requested for oneself and the release extended to debtors, joining both acts in one image.
ALSO GROWS
aphesis: Release, remission, forgiveness.
ἄφεσις
This noun makes the connection explicit: forgiveness can name the release of a claim.
apheinai: To let go, leave, or release.
ἀφεῖναι
This form from the same verb family keeps the act concrete: what is held can be let go.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness advances when a claim is released and the person bound by it is set free.
And you shall set apart the fiftieth year, and proclaim a free flowing through all the land to all who settle in it. It shall be a ram's horn year for you, and you shall turn back each to his holding, and each to his family you shall turn back.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.And be useful to one another, tender in the inward parts, releasing one another, just as God in the Anointed One has released you.THE THREAD
Then the lord of that servant was stirred in his inward parts, and let him go, and released the debt.The lord releases the very debt owed to him, using the same Greek verb family translated “forgive” here. The debt is real, yet its claim is let go and the debtor is released.
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