What Does Matthew 6:31 Mean?
So do not be pulled apart, saying, "What shall we eat?" Or, "What shall we drink?" Or, "With what shall we be wrapped?"
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
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?THE KEY
The Greek verb behind “take no thought” also names care for one another, so this verse exposes anxious self-rehearsal without condemning care itself.
THE MEANING
The questions keep returning to the body’s immediate needs: food, drink, clothing. The verse speaks to you now as a naming of anxious rehearsal, within the assurance that your Father already knows what you need. Your needs are real; repeating the questions is not what supplies them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that mentally rehearsing the necessities you lack can make you secure; the verse reveals that repetition as anxiety, not provision.
THE ROOT
μεριμνήσητε
merimnēsēte
GROWS FROM
μεριμν-
merimn-
To be anxiously concerned; to care.
“So do not be pulled apart” in this verse is merimnēsēte. English “take no thought” can sound as if all concern is being dismissed. The same Greek verb describes the members’ care for one another elsewhere, showing that this word can name both anxious preoccupation and care directed toward another.
ALSO GROWS
merimnaō: To be anxiously concerned.
μεριμνάω
It is the same verb used for the anxious questions surrounding this verse, making those questions an expression of the root’s concern.
merimnōsin: To care for one another.
μεριμνῶσιν
The same verb can describe relational care, showing that the verse names anxiety without making care itself the problem.
THE PATTERN
Need is sustained by God’s provision rather than by anxious rehearsal.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in its season.Look closely at the ravens. They neither sow nor reap, nor have an inner room or a storehouse, and God feeds them. How much more do you surpass the birds?THE THREAD
So that there would be no split in the body, but that the limbs would tend one another alike.The verb rendered “take no thought” here is also rendered “care” when it describes the members of the body. That shared word reveals a distinction English can hide: concern can turn inward as anxiety over survival, or move outward as care among people.
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