What Does Matthew 9:4 Mean?
And Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, Why do you turn painful things over in your hearts?
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 Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?THE KEY
The thought in your heart is already part of the conversation: Jesus answers it before it leaves your mouth.
THE MEANING
Your inward reasoning is open to Jesus before it becomes speech. His question brings the thought held in your heart into the open and addresses it directly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A thought is harmless or invisible simply because it has not been spoken.
THE ROOT
ἐνθυμήσεις
enthymēseis
GROWS FROM
θυμ-
thym-
Heat, passion, inward stirring.
Matthew uses the same word-family for the thoughts Jesus knows and for the thinking he challenges. The root θυμ- carries heat or passion, showing thought as inwardly stirred movement rather than detached information.
ALSO GROWS
thymos: Heat, passion, anger.
θυμός
This root carries the inward heat that gives the thought word its sense of something being turned over within.
enthumeomai: To consider, ponder, or turn something over inwardly.
ἐνθυμέομαι
This is the verb translated “think” in the same question, so the verse names both their thoughts and their thinking from one word-family.
THE PATTERN
The inward heart is visible to God before its thoughts become outward speech.
But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, for I have pushed him away. The LORD does not see as the human sees. The human sees what is outside, but the LORD sees the heart.You perceive my sitting and my rising, and from afar you separate out my thought.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, Every governance divided against itself is laid empty, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.Matthew uses the same word for “thoughts” in both verses. Here, those known thoughts open onto the image of a divided kingdom, showing how what is held inwardly can disclose the condition of the whole.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us