What Does Matthew 8:29 Mean?
And they cried out, saying, What is there between us and you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the season?
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, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?THE KEY
The Greek word for “torment” shares a word-family with the touchstone used to test metal, so the encounter carries an echo of exposure as well as pain.
THE MEANING
Destructive powers recognize Jesus and fear what his arrival means. Their question about “the time” treats reckoning as real while protesting that it has come too soon; recognition and resistance stand together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that destructive power sets its own terms: even the voices resisting Jesus recognize an authority and a time beyond themselves.
THE ROOT
βασανίσαι
basanisai
GROWS FROM
βασαν-
The Greek stem βασαν- (basan-) is associated with βάσανος (básanos), a touchstone used to test metal; the word-family also came to name examination under torture and torment.
The word-family holds an old image of testing with a stone beneath its later sense of torture. Here, “torment” names the suffering they fear, while the history of the word lets exposure echo beneath the English.
ALSO GROWS
básanos: Touchstone; also torture or torment.
βάσανος
This cognate preserves the touchstone image in the same word-family as βασανίσαι.
basanismós: Torment or torture.
βασανισμός
This related noun uses the same βασαν- stem for the torment feared in the verse.
καιροῦ
kairou
GROWS FROM
καιρ-
The Greek stem καιρ- (kair-) names a season, occasion, or fitting moment.
“before the season” in this verse is kairou. The phrase πρὸ καιροῦ (pro kairou, “before the time”) places the encounter against a moment they consider still ahead. Their protest itself reveals an awareness of a boundary and its timing.
ALSO GROWS
kairós: Season, occasion, or fitting time.
καιρός
καιροῦ is the form of this noun used in the verse.
kairios: Timely or opportune.
καίριος
This related word carries the same stem into the sense of what arrives at a fitting moment, sharpening the force of “before the time.”
THE PATTERN
Hostile powers remain subject to a boundary and a time beyond themselves.
And the LORD said to the Adversary, Look, all that he has is in your hand; only toward him do not stretch out your hand. So the Adversary went out from the face of the LORD.Saying, "Leave us be. What is there between us and you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to make us perish? I know who you are, the Set-Apart One of God."And he throws the dragon into the pit without floor, shuts him in, and presses a seal upon him, so that he leads the nations off the path no more until the thousand years are finished. After that he must be loosed for a little while.THE THREAD
And he cried out with a loud voice and said, "What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I bind you by God, that you do not torment me."Mark uses βασανίσῃς (basanísēs, “torment”), from the same βασαν- stem. The repeated word makes the fear audible across both scenes: these voices recognize Jesus and plead against the ordeal they associate with his presence.
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