Lost In Translation: Matthew 19:14

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

(Note: This article is a part of my current series explaining the deeper meaning of some of Jesus’s most popular verses. See this article for the beginning of this series.)

Like many of Jesus’s verses, Matthew 19:14 has a bit of wordplay but its humor is not in its punchline. Jesus begins the verse with a tease whose meaning only becomes clear at the punchline, the end of the first sentence.

The context for this verse is Jesus condemning divorce, saying that it is better not to marry than to marry and then divorce. He then says one can be a eunuch for the sake of the Realm of the Skies as well as physical reasons. The alternative of being a eunuch would seem less positive in his era than among some Christians in our own today. His implication it that a bad marriage is better than this losing our man or womanhood. One reason is the topic of this verse: marriage leads naturally to children. Men and women of Jesus’s time saw children as one of the main benefits of marriage. Supporting children was nearly impossible at the time without a two-parent family.

What does Jesus say about children in this verse?

NIV: Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

This verse implies that having children is bringing “the skies” (biblically translated as “heaven”) to earth, but what is lost in translation is why.

The Beginning Tease

 The word translated as "let” starts a bit of wordplay. The Greek word, aphiemi, primarily means “to let drop,” "to send away," "give up," and "to get rid of." It starts the verse, as a command usually does, and it is followed by “these children” in the noun form that makes what is being sent away. So, Jesus begins by saying, “Get rid of these children.” But the meaning of Jesus’s first word here is not immediately clear because aphiemi has more meanings.

Getting rid of the children is clearly what his followers were trying to do at the time, but he probably said this in a non-serious way to get them and the children in on his eventual meaning, which is far from clear after the first phrase. Let us assume he paused here as part of the setup.

Who are “these children?” The Greek word is paidion, which means "little child" or "young child," (up to seven years old) or "infant." It is one of several words Jesus uses that are translated as "children" (see this series of articles). This is a diminutive form, like our word “kiddies.” Jesus refers to different groups of young with different words. The paidion are the very young.

Why the cutoff at age seven? After that age, children become more familiar with the larger world outside of the home. They become more integrated into society. The economy of the world was mostly agricultural at the time. Older children were put to work. They could do much of the productive agricultural work of adults when the tasks didn’t require heavy lifting or skill. At one time, the Catholic Church taught that this age was the age of consent, when children could begin to “sin.” Note, however, that this is only halfway to the age of maturity in Judean culture.

The phrase following this beginning is ambiguous saying, “and don’t hinder them.” This could mean don’t stop them from leaving or it could mean don’t stop them from coming. The word translated as “hinder” is an uncommon one in Jesus’s words, but not in ancient Greek. It is meant to confuse his listeners. This meaning of all of this isn’t revealed until the last word, the punchline of the first sentence. He says, “coming before me.”

This is, of course, what the English translation says directly, but the fun of Jesus’s words is often hearing them as his listeners would have through his setups and payoffs.

Such Greatness

Jesus saw kiddies as a type of paragon and an example for us. Jesus used the same Greek word for “children” in two earlier verses in the previous chapter of Matthew. In both, he make this same point: