What Does Matthew 9:25 Mean?
But when the crowd was thrown out, he entered and grasped her hand, and the girl rose.
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
But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.THE KEY
Her “arising” also carries the sense of being awakened and raised, opening this bedside moment onto resurrection.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks into the moment that looks finished: Jesus enters, takes the girl’s hand, and she rises. A still body is not the final word while life-giving power is present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what appears beyond recovery is beyond Jesus’ reach.
THE ROOT
ἠγέρθη
ēgerthē
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
to awaken, rouse, or raise up
“arose” in this verse is ēgerthē. Here the verb is passive in form, so the moment can be heard as both her rising and her being raised. Across its branches it can describe waking from sleep, being raised from death, and resurrection, keeping waking and resurrection within one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
egerthēnai: to be raised
ἐγερθῆναι
This form appears in Matthew 16:21 for being raised on the third day, linking the girl’s rising with resurrection.
egersis: raising; resurrection
ἔγερσις
Matthew 27:53 uses this noun for resurrection, showing how the same word-family reaches from waking and rising to resurrection.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents divine life as reaching into the place where ordinary life has stopped and raising it again.
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Elijah, and the living soul of the child returned into him, and he lived.But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.But Peter cast them all outside, and set his knees down, and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, stand up. And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up.THE THREAD
But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.Matthew’s word for the girl’s rising and Romans’ words for Jesus being raised come from the same Greek word-family: ἐγείρω (egeirō), “to awaken or raise up.” The shared root opens her bedside rising onto the Bible’s larger language of resurrection and life given to mortal bodies.
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