Lost In Translation: Matthew 7:7-8

The Hidden Truth

I suspect this verse is popular because it appears short, simple, and fairly accurately translated. However, “simple” is really not Jesus’s style so there is a lot of truth here for which we must search. This verse is about becoming, the hidden becoming the truth and those commanded becoming truth-seekers.

What is obscured in the translation of Matthew 7:7 is the connection between its six key verbs and the Greek word for “truth.” The Greek for “truth” is aletheia (see this article). Its literal meaning is “not hidden.” To “know” in Greek is the past perfect tense of the verb “to see.” What we “have seen” is what we know. To see something means to know what is true. This idea creates an interesting dynamic between the truth and what is hidden. By definition, what is hidden is not the truth. What is hidden becomes the truth when it has been revealed, when it can be easily seen by others. Notice, this “truth” is not the deeper, mystical, and often incomprehensible truths that are preached in all religions . The ancients had no such concepts. Their truth could be hidden and be currently unknown, but it is never beyond our grasp.

Though it never mentions “truth,” at the time this verse would have been heard as about how information is hidden and what we do to reveal it. This word, aletheia, doesn’t appear in the Sermon on the Mount or anywhere in Matthew, but this verse changes the topic from Matthew 7:6 (“Do not give dogs what is sacred;”) so I suspect the question about truth arose in a question from Jesus’s audience.

Matthew 7:7

NIV:  Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
LISTENERS HEARD: Ask, and it will given to you all; search and you all will discover; examine and it will be disclosed to you all:

This verse consists of six verbs in three clauses. The first verb in each clause is a command to uncover the truth. We are ordered to become truth seekers. The second verb in each clause is in the future tense, a prediction, or perhaps a promise of seeing truth if we do as commanded. The first three of these verbs on truth-seeking, "ask," "give," and "seek," have been used several times before in the Sermon, but next three verbs on discovery, , "find," "knock," and "open," are used by Jesus for the first time here.

The three clauses of this verse describe the three ways in which what is true can be hidden:

• They can be hidden by or in others.

• They can be hidden in the larger world.

• They can be hidden within things.