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Today's Verse Analysis

Matthew 20:22 You do not know what you ask...

Salome asks special places for her sons, James and John.

Spoken to
group

Matthew 20:22  Οὐκ οἴδατε τί αἰτεῖσθε: δύνασθε πιεῖν τὸ ποτήριον ὃ ἐγὼ μέλλω πίνειν;

KJV Verse

Matthew 20:22 Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

 

NIV Verse:

Matthew 20:22  You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?

What His Listeners Heard:

You haven't seen what you ask for yourselves. Do you have the power to drink this cup that I myself am destined to drink?

Lost In Translation:

This answer is not addressed to an individual, Salome. the mother who asks the question, but to a group. So Jesus assumes she is a front for the brothers. The last phrase is addressed to them.

Children drank wine mixed in their water from a very early age in Jesus's society, but strong drink was limited to adults. Everyone would have had the experience of being told that they were not strong enough to drink from an adult's cup. Jesus saw the apostle's as his children.

For a king, the most obvious meaning was that food tasters first drank from their cup to see if the drink was poisoned. There is certainly a sense of that here, but the issue here is having the ability or the strength to do this. While it could be that food tasters were stronger than regular people so they could survive poison, there is more common experience in the time of Jesus's.

KJV w/Translation Issues :

Ye know not what ye ask(WV). Are ye able to drink of(IW) the cup that I (MW) shall(WW) drink(WF) of(IW), [and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?(IP)]

KJV List (See full page for word-by-word analysis):
For analysis of each word of original Greek and biblical verses, click here.

Constantly Updated

My analysis standards and methods are constantly improving. New information on each verse is provided as articles are updated. It requires approximately two years for me to work through updating each of Jesus's verses.

What Jesus's Listeners Heard

The everyday meanings of the Greek words Jesus used were different than the definitions they have been given over time in biblical translation. The word translations here are based upon documents of his time such as the Greek Septuagint, not ideas unknown in his time.

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See what Jesus said in Greek and see how his words are changed in English translation. My goal is to translate Jesus's words as they were heard when he taught, not the way they are interpreted today. The work here resurrects the humor and cleverness of Jesus's words lost in translation.

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