What Does Matthew 9:11 Mean?
And when the separated ones saw it, they said to his learners, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and those who miss the mark?
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 when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?THE KEY
The table brings people called “sinners”, people marked by missing, within reach, exposing how the label can become a wall.
THE MEANING
The question still asks who is fit to share a table. It names tax collectors and people marked by missing, then treats their presence near Jesus as a problem. The verse lets you see the boundary in the very act of sharing a meal across it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person labeled a sinner is too compromised to share a table with.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτωλῶν
hamartōlōn
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτάνω
hamartanō
to miss, to go wrong
“those who miss the mark” in this verse is hamartōlōn. The word keeps a person called a “sinner” linguistically joined to the condition of missing. At the table, that label marks the people Jesus sits with; it does not keep them at a distance.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: to miss, to go wrong
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb beneath the label makes “sinner” a word connected to missing, rather than an unrelated kind of person.
hamartia: missing; wrongdoing
ἁμαρτία
This related noun carries the same root into the condition named by the label, illuminating who is present at the table.
THE PATTERN
God’s table gathers people across boundaries that mark some as outside.
And in this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines kept on their lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines kept on their lees, well strained.And the separated ones and the writers murmured, saying, "This man receives those who miss the mark, and eats with them."And he said to them, You know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to cling to, or come near, one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.THE THREAD
I have not come to call the aligned, but those who miss the mark into turning.The word rendered “sinners” is ἁμαρτωλούς (hamartōlous, “sinners”), from ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō, “to miss”), the same word family found in Matthew. Luke’s verse connects that label to a call, while Matthew shows Jesus already sharing a table with those who bear it.
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