The Glory of the Son, the Coming of Elijah, the Failure of Little Faith, and the Son’s Humble Freedom

Prosōpon is the Greek word for face, but it carries a range of meaning that English 'face' does not fully capture. In the New Testament it functions as the literal face (the physical countenance of a person), the presence of a person (to see someone's face is to be in their presence), and the front or outer appearance of something. The word's theological richness comes from its use in contexts where the face of God — or the face seen in a mirror, or the face of another person — carries covenantal and eschatological weight.

Moses' face shone after encountering God's presence (Ex. 34. 35); the Aaronic blessing speaks of the Lord lifting his face upon Israel (Num. 6. 25-26, translated prosōpon in the LXX). Paul uses prosōpon in 2 Corinthians 3-4 to develop one of the most concentrated theological passages in his letters: we behold the glory of God in the face (prosōpon) of Jesus Christ (4.

6). The eschatological vision of 1 Corinthians 13:12 promises that we will see not dimly in a mirror but 'face to face' — prosōpon pros prosōpon. The face that was lifted toward Israel in blessing, that shone on Moses on the mountain, that the Psalms begged to see and not turn away — is the face that Paul says shines in the face of the one who is the image of God.

Ἥλιος means the sun, the created light that marks day, supplies ordinary experience, and serves biblical comparisons of radiance and judgment. Jesus points to the Father's sun rising on evil and good as evidence of generous providence that shapes enemy love. The women approach Jesus' tomb after sunrise, locating resurrection discovery in real time. Paul distinguishes the sun's glory from other heavenly bodies when explaining embodied resurrection.

Revelation pictures the sun darkened under judgment and finally unnecessary in the new Jerusalem because God's own radiance gives light. The sun remains a creature, not a deity. Context determines whether it marks time, common grace, created splendor, cosmic disruption, or surpassed light.

Λευκός means white, bright, shining, or pale. Jesus notes that a person cannot make one hair white or black, exposing human inability behind oath-making claims. At the transfiguration His clothes become dazzling white as His glory is revealed in prayer. Revelation uses white garments for faithful and cleansed people, white robes for the multinational multitude before the Lamb, and a great white throne for God's final judgment.

The color can describe ordinary hair, supernatural radiance, purity, victory, or majestic judgment. It does not assign moral value to skin color or ethnicity. The object, source of whiteness, narrative setting, and explicit interpretation determine what brightness or whiteness communicates.

φῶς is one of the most theologically loaded nouns in the NT, appearing currently counted about 72 times in the local NT index and functioning at several levels of the biblical world: physical light, the divine presence, moral purity, christological identity, and eschatological hope. The word's range cannot be reduced to any single register without losing its power.

John opens his Gospel by identifying the Word as 'the light of men' (John 1:4), and then specifies: 'In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' The light-darkness contrast structures the entire Johannine theology: God is light (1 John 1:5), Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:5), the believer is called to walk in the light (1 John 1:7), and the new creation needs no sun because God's glory is its light (Rev 21:23).

Matthew grounds the christological light claim in geography: the people sitting in darkness in Galilee have seen a great light (Matt 4:16, citing Isa 9:2). Paul takes the same Isaiah background and applies it to the new creation: 'God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ' (2 Cor 4:6).

The creation of light in Genesis 1 is the template for the new creation act in the gospel. For the preacher, φῶς is a word that works at several scales: the physical sunrise that announces another day of God's faithfulness, the moral clarity that exposes what darkness conceals, the christological claim that the one who made light has entered the darkness, and the eschatological promise that the last city needs no lamp because the Lord God will be its light (Rev 22:5).

The word does not lose its physical anchor even when it is being used theologically — and that physicality is not accidental. Light is the most universal human experience of what arrival, clarity, safety, and warmth feel like. φῶς is the word the NT uses to say that God himself is all of those things.

G3475 names Moses, the covenant mediator and lawgiver whose writings, wilderness patterns, and law are repeatedly brought into John's witness to Jesus. John does not treat Moses as a failed or discarded figure. The Gospel honors Moses as a real witness while exposing the danger of appealing to Moses against the One to whom Moses points. The name appears in scenes about the law, the prophets, the serpent lifted in the wilderness, bread from heaven, circumcision, and disputed discipleship.

Its pastoral value is not that Moses competes with Christ, but that Moses' testimony is rightly read when it leads to Christ. The entry must preserve biblical continuity and avoid making Moses a symbol of everything Jesus opposes.

Σκηνή names a tent, temporary dwelling, booth, or tabernacle. In the Transfiguration accounts, Peter offers to build three shelters for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, but the heavenly voice directs attention uniquely to the beloved Son. Stephen quotes Amos to condemn Israel's carrying of an idolatrous tent, showing that a sacred-looking dwelling can serve false worship.

Hebrews speaks of the true tabernacle erected by the Lord, where the exalted High Priest ministers, and contrasts it with the earthly copy. The noun does not carry one symbolic meaning in every text. It may be an ordinary shelter, an idolatrous shrine, the Mosaic sanctuary, or a heavenly-cultic image. Context and covenant location govern the theological claim.

φωνή (phone) means voice, sound, or cry. In the NT it carries a distinctive theological weight because so many of its occurrences are the voice of God or Christ — at the baptism, the transfiguration, the Johannine thunder-voice, and above all in John's Gospel where the shepherd's phone is the distinguishing mark that his sheep follow. The local Greek artifact indexes about 139 NT occurrences and shows a range from simple auditory sound (musical instruments in 1 Cor 14:7) to the divine voice that will raise the dead (Jhn 5:28).

John 10:3-5 is the theologically richest concentration: 'The sheep hear his voice (phone), and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice (phone). A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice (phone) of strangers.' Phone appears three times in three verses, each time as the distinguishing criterion of the relationship. The sheep do not follow the shepherd because they have been trained to obey a command; they follow because they know his voice personally — recognition, not mere compliance. The stranger's voice is not familiar; it provokes flight, not following.

The voice of God at the baptism establishes a pattern: 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased' (Mat 3:17). The phone from heaven is the Father's public identification of Jesus — divine authentication given in publicly spoken form. The same phone comes again at the transfiguration (Mat 17:5) and in John 12:28-30 where the crowd debates whether it was thunder or an angel. The point in each case is the same: the Father speaks publicly to identify and vindicate the Son. The phone of God is authoritative speech that settles questions of identity and standing.

John 5:25 and 5:28-29 extend phone to eschatological resurrection: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice (phone) of the Son of God, and those who hear will live... an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice (phone) and come out.' The phone of Christ has the power to raise the dead — both spiritually now ('is now here') and bodily at the last day. The word with which the shepherd calls his sheep is the same word that will call the dead from their tombs.

For the preacher, φωνή (phone) is the word that insists the Christian life is fundamentally relational and auditory: it begins with hearing a personal voice, it is sustained by continued listening to that voice, and it will be consummated when that voice raises the dead.

Agapetos means beloved or dearly loved. The word can name the unique beloved Son, address believers loved by God, speak pastorally to children in the faith, and summon the church to love because love comes from God. Its pastoral weight begins with divine initiative. At Jesus' baptism, the Father's voice identifies Him as the beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.

The church is addressed as loved by God and called to be saints, and believers are exhorted as beloved children. The word should not be reduced to sentiment or generic warmth. It names covenantal, familial, and pastoral affection shaped by God's own love. Teachers should distinguish Christ's unique Sonship from believers' beloved status in Him, while showing that both are rooted in God's gracious love.

Εὐδοκέω means to be pleased, take delight, consider something good, or willingly choose a course. At Jesus' baptism the Father declares His pleasure in the beloved Son, a public affirmation bound to Jesus' identity and obedient mission. Churches in Macedonia and Achaia are pleased to share materially with poor saints, so the verb can describe willing human resolve.

Paul also says God was pleased to save believers through the proclaimed message that worldly wisdom calls foolish. The word does not mean a passing mood or arbitrary preference. Its subject, object, and purpose show whether it speaks of divine delight, sovereign resolve, communal willingness, or approval of a proposed action.

Ἀκούω is a Greek verb meaning to hear, listen, receive by hearing, heed, or understand what is heard. It can describe physical hearing, receiving testimony, attending to a command, or hearing in a way that calls for response.

Pastorally, this word matters because Scripture often treats hearing as accountable reception. The Father says to listen to the Son. Jesus says the one who hears His word and believes has eternal life. The churches must hear what the Spirit says. Apostolic testimony is something heard, announced, and kept.

The verb should not be flattened. Hearing can be mere sound, attentive listening, obedient response, or reception of witness. The passage tells which sense is active.

Phobeo means to fear, be afraid, be alarmed, or show reverent regard. The New Testament uses it for terror before danger, reverent fear of God, fear of people, respect within ordered relationships, and holy warning against arrogance. The word must be handled by context because fear can be sinful, natural, protective, reverent, or commanded. Angels tell frightened people not to fear because God is acting in mercy.

Jesus tells disciples not to fear human persecutors but to fear God. Acts speaks of God-fearing Gentiles whom God welcomes. Paul warns believers not to be arrogant but to fear. Peter can command fear of God while also calling believers to honor others. Phobeo therefore helps readers reorder fear under God's authority rather than deny fear or be ruled by it.

Egeiro means to raise, awaken, get up, or cause to rise. It can describe ordinary rising, waking, healing, raising up a person, or resurrection from the dead. In the New Testament, its central theological weight falls on the resurrection of Jesus and the future raising of those who belong to Him. Matthew announces, 'He has risen.' John records Jesus' authority to raise the temple of His body, His claim that the Father raises the dead, and apostolic preaching that God raised the Author of life.

Paul joins the same verb to the Spirit's future giving of life to mortal bodies and to Christ as firstfruits. Egeiro must not be spiritualized into vague renewal. Nor should every use be forced into resurrection. The context decides whether the rising is from sleep, sickness, posture, death, or final hope.

ἐπιγινώσκω (epiginōskō) means to recognize, identify, perceive, acknowledge, come to know, or know more fully according to context. The prefixed form can emphasize recognition or developed knowledge, but the prefix does not automatically produce exhaustive or spiritually superior knowing. Jesus says false prophets will be recognized by their fruit. The Emmaus disciples recognize the risen Jesus when their eyes are opened, after He has interpreted the Scriptures and broken bread.

Jerusalem’s rulers recognize that Peter and John have been with Jesus by observing their boldness. The Colossians truly understand God’s grace as the gospel bears fruit among them. Paul says present knowledge is partial and future knowledge will be fuller, corresponding to being known by God, without claiming that redeemed creatures become omniscient. Recognition therefore may arise through marks, fruit, remembered relationship, evidence, revelation, or deepening acquaintance.

It can still be resisted, mistaken, or incomplete. Teachers should avoid the root or prefix fallacy and let each object, tense, and comparison define how much knowledge the verb claims.

πάσχω means to suffer, undergo, or experience something, especially affliction, pain, mistreatment, or costly obedience. The word is not automatically heroic and should not be romanticized. Its Christian weight comes from the way Scripture uses it around Christ and His people. Christ suffered, learned obedience through what He suffered, and entered glory through suffering.

Believers may also suffer for Him, suffer while doing good, and entrust themselves to God. In the Pastoral Epistles, Paul’s own suffering is joined to confidence: he is not ashamed because he knows the One he has believed. Suffering is interpreted through Christ, guarded by faith, and entrusted to God.

G1653 means to show mercy or to have mercy on someone. In Paul, mercy is never a reward the sinner controls. Romans 9 and 11 place mercy in God's sovereign freedom and saving purpose. Second Corinthians shows that received mercy sustains ministry endurance. The word helps teachers speak of mercy as God's action toward the undeserving.

For preaching and teaching, this companion keeps the term tied to its cited Pauline settings before moving toward doctrine or application. The aim is not to turn a Greek gloss into a sermon by itself, but to help readers notice how the word functions inside Paul's argument, relationships, warnings, and gospel-centered exhortation with patient clarity.

Huios names a son, and in the New Testament it carries several important uses: ordinary human sonship, messianic and royal identity, Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus' self-designation as the Son of Man, and believers as sons of God by grace. The term must not be flattened into one meaning everywhere. Matthew 3:17 and John 3:16 reveal Jesus as the beloved and only Son.

Matthew 8:20 uses Son of Man language for His humble mission. Romans 8:14 names believers as sons of God through the Spirit, while Galatians 4:4 grounds adoption in God's sending of His Son. For pastoral teaching, huios opens the glory of Christ's identity and the grace of believers' adoption while preserving the difference between the eternal Son and those brought into family life through Him.

πῦρ (pŷr) names fire in its concrete reality: a flame can warm, illuminate, destroy, refine, or expose what cannot endure. New Testament writers also employ fire within different literary settings, so the word may mark the visible image at Pentecost, the proving of work, the testing of faith, God's holy presence, destructive speech, or final judgment. The noun itself does not decide which of those meanings governs a verse.

Luke 3 places fire beside the coming One's winnowing work; Acts 2 speaks of tongues like flames of fire; 1 Corinthians 3 concerns the testing of each person's work; and Hebrews 12 calls believers to reverent worship because God is a consuming fire. These are related, but they are not interchangeable. A responsible study begins with the speaker, audience, argument, and genre before drawing a theological line.

πῦρ therefore helps readers notice Scripture's serious, sensory language without turning every mention of fire into a private experience, a promise of revival, or a single scheme of judgment. The material image itself supplies an important restraint. A flame in an ordinary scene is not automatically a symbol, and a symbolic fire does not erase the concrete force of heat, danger, and consumption.

Acts can describe a fire by which Paul is warmed, James can use fire for a tongue that corrupts, and Revelation can place fire inside a vision of final judgment. Christian teaching should neither drain these scenes of their sensory force nor force them into a single sermon point. The pastoral question is therefore precise: what is this fire doing here, and how does this passage direct hearers toward repentance, gratitude, endurance, or hope in Christ?

Hydōr is the Greek word for water — ordinary physical water, the substance without which human life cannot continue — but in the New Testament it carries an extraordinary range of theological meaning. John's Gospel uses it more than any other New Testament book and gives it its most concentrated symbolic weight. Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at a well and offers her water that becomes an internal spring welling up to eternal life.

He speaks of being born of water and Spirit (John 3:5). At the Feast of Tabernacles he cries out that whoever believes in him will have rivers of living water flowing from within them. On the cross, water flows from his pierced side alongside blood. The Book of Revelation pictures the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God. At every point hydōr moves between the literal and the figurative without leaving either behind.

Water is the physical substance everyone in the ancient world understood as essential and scarce; Jesus uses that shared human knowledge to describe what he gives — the Spirit, eternal life, cleansing, regeneration — as something that meets the deepest thirst of human existence. The word carries the entire Old Testament river of God's provision (the water from the rock, the streams in the desert Isaiah promises, the river from the temple in Ezekiel) into the New Testament's account of what Jesus and the Spirit supply.

θεραπεύω (therapeuō) most often means to heal or cure in the New Testament, while Acts 17 preserves the related sense of serving or attending. Matthew joins Jesus’ healing of disease and sickness to His kingdom teaching and proclamation. When the centurion speaks of his servant, Jesus simply answers that He will come and heal him, displaying compassionate authority.

Luke shows Jesus delegating power to cure diseases and instructing the sent disciples to heal the sick while announcing that God’s kingdom has come near. Paul’s Areopagus speech then says the Creator is not served by human hands as though He needed anything. The lexical range should not be manipulated into the claim that all Christian service is healing or that medical cure exhausts biblical care.

Healing signs attest the kingdom and mercy of Jesus, yet their narratives remain specific, and final freedom from sickness belongs to resurrection hope.

Ἄπιστος can describe someone unbelieving, unfaithful, or not credible. Jesus addresses an unbelieving generation whose failure to trust stands amid His disciples' inability and a suffering family's need. He tells Thomas not to remain unbelieving but to become believing after presenting the wounds of His risen body. Paul can ask why resurrection should be judged incredible and can also use the adjective for people outside the believing community or for conduct that betrays entrusted responsibility.

The word is stronger than a passing question, yet its pastoral force depends on context. Scripture distinguishes stubborn refusal, limited understanding, honest struggle, covenant faithlessness, and the gracious summons to faith.

Ἐπιτιμάω (epitimaō) means to rebuke, censure, warn sternly, or command with sharp authority. Jesus rebukes winds and sea, and creation becomes calm, displaying sovereign command rather than moral correction of weather. He sternly orders unclean spirits not to disclose His identity on their terms. A crowd rebukes the blind beggar to silence him, but their censure is wrong and he cries louder for mercy.

Jesus rebukes disciples whose response to rejection contradicts His mission. Jude says even Michael does not pronounce a slanderous judgment against the devil but appeals, “The Lord rebuke you. ” Rebuke can be rightful, mistaken, creature-directed, or presumptuous. Speaker, authority, object, and cause determine whether sharp speech serves truth or suppresses a faithful plea.

Daimonion means a demon or evil spirit, a personal created power opposed to God. Paul says pagan sacrifices participate with demons and warns of teachings associated with deceitful spirits and demons. James says demons possess correct monotheistic knowledge yet shudder, proving that bare assent is not saving faith. The Gospels portray demons oppressing people and submitting to Jesus' sovereign command, while opponents wrongly accuse Jesus of demonic influence.

The word should not become a label for mental illness, disability, trauma, cultural difference, or a difficult person. Scripture affirms real spiritual evil without authorizing speculative diagnosis. Christian response centers on Christ's victory, prayer, truth, holiness, compassionate care, medical help where appropriate, and accountable pastoral practice free from fear, spectacle, or coercion.

Exerchomai is a broad verb for going out, coming out, or departing. Its meaning is controlled by origin, destination, subject, and purpose. Matthew cites the promise that a ruler will come from Bethlehem. Mark describes Jesus' family going out to restrain Him. Jesus instructs rejected messengers to leave a town and shake dust from their feet. Barnabas departs for Tarsus to seek Saul.

Revelation depicts deceiving spirits going out to gather the nations for battle. These are not one theological movement. The verb can mark messianic emergence, mistaken intervention, obedient withdrawal, purposeful search, or evil mobilization. A faithful study resists turning "going out" into a symbol until the passage itself does so and instead follows the narrative action and agency.

ὥρα (hōra) means an hour, a time of day, a short period, or a decisive moment whose significance comes from the surrounding event. The New Testament uses it for ordinary clock time, the moment something happens, a season of testing, the unknown time of the Lord’s return, and the appointed culmination of Jesus’ earthly mission. John develops the word with particular care.

At Cana, Jesus says His hour has not yet come. When Greeks seek Him near the Passover, He announces that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, then immediately speaks of a grain dying and of being lifted up. Before the meal with His disciples, He knows that His hour has come to leave the world and go to the Father, and His love for His own frames the passage.

The “hour” therefore gathers cross, glorification, departure, return to the Father, and faithful love into the Gospel’s narrative movement. Elsewhere Jesus says no one knows the day or hour of His return except the Father. Paul says the hour has come to wake from sleep because salvation is nearer, and Revelation announces the hour of God’s judgment. These uses do not make every occurrence a coded divine timetable.

Sometimes an hour is simply a measure or moment. Even when the time is appointed, Scripture calls for obedience rather than fatalism or date-setting. Teachers should ask whether ὥρα marks duration, immediate timing, narrative fulfillment, eschatological uncertainty, or judgment. The word directs readers to God’s purposeful timing while keeping Christ’s cross and promised return at the center, but it does not disclose schedules God has withheld.

Idios means one's own, private, personal, or belonging particularly to someone or something. Jesus returns to His own city. Opponents understand His language about God as His own Father as a claim of equality. Paul says God did not spare His own Son but gave Him for His people. An overseer must manage his own household before caring for God's church. Jude says angels did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling.

The adjective marks a particular relationship or sphere, but it does not imply selfish autonomy or absolute possession. Context may emphasize belonging, uniqueness, responsibility, or a proper place entrusted under God's rule.

Ekballo means to cast out, drive out, send out, expel, or force something or someone from a place. John uses it for Jesus' promise never to cast away those the Father gives Him, the ruler of this world being cast out through the cross, and Jesus driving merchants and animals from the temple. Paul quotes Scripture about casting out the slave woman within his allegorical argument, while Jesus uses the verb for urgently sending laborers into harvest.

The action ranges from gracious non-rejection to judgment, expulsion, and forceful commissioning. It does not authorize leaders to remove people, perform deliverance, or wield force without the passage's authority. Church discipline requires truth, due process, protection, proportionality, and lawful conduct.

πίστις means faith, trust, or faithfulness, and in the Pastoral Epistles it carries both personal reliance on Christ and the entrusted body of apostolic truth. The word can describe sincere faith, the faith that receives salvation in Christ Jesus, faith held with a clear conscience, faith that can be shipwrecked, faith some abandon, and the faith Paul has kept to the end.

It can also describe the faith of God's elect and the faithful conduct that adorns the teaching about God our Savior. This range requires careful teaching. Paul is not using πίστις as bare religious sincerity. Faith has an object: Christ Jesus. Faith also has a moral companion: a good conscience. Faith can be nourished by Scripture, guarded against false teaching, modeled across generations, and persevered in through suffering.

In these letters, faith is personal and doctrinal, received and guarded, confessed and lived. It is not works-righteousness, but neither is it empty profession. Pastoral teaching should help readers trust Christ, hold the apostolic faith, keep conscience clear, resist shipwreck, and finish the race.

ὄρος (oros) is the ordinary Greek noun for a mountain, hill, or elevated terrain. Scripture often places important events on mountains, but the noun does not make elevation sacred by itself. In Matthew, a very high mountain becomes the setting where the devil displays the kingdoms of the world and tempts Jesus. Another mountain provides the place where Jesus sits and teaches His disciples.

Jesus withdraws to a mountain to pray, takes three disciples onto a high mountain where He is transfigured, and later designates a Galilean mountain where the risen Lord commissions the eleven. John’s Gospel records a dispute about the proper mountain for worship, and Jesus announces an hour when worship of the Father will not be controlled by either that mountain or Jerusalem.

Hebrews contrasts the terrifying mountain of Sinai with believers’ approach to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. Each scene receives meaning from God’s action, Christ’s words, covenant history, and narrative purpose. Altitude cannot guarantee revelation, purity, authority, or emotional intensity. A mountain can host temptation, prayer, teaching, glory, flight, judgment, or mission.

Nor should every mountain be blended into a single symbolic “mountaintop experience. ” Sinai, Zion, Gerizim, the Mount of Olives, the transfiguration mountain, and the Galilean commissioning mountain occupy different roles. ὄρος helps readers notice setting and movement, then invites them to ask what this particular location contributes. Theologically, the canon moves from mountains associated with covenant encounter and Zion hope toward Jesus, who teaches, prays, reveals His glory, relativizes competing sacred sites, and sends disciples under universal authority.

παραδίδωμι is one of the NT's theologically weighty verbs. The local Greek index currently counts about 119 occurrences, and the verb carries a range that spans betrayal, judicial delivery, and divine sovereign act — often in the same narrative. The word is a compound: παρά (beside, from) and δίδωμι (to give). It means to hand over, to deliver into someone's custody, to transmit, to betray.

In the passion narratives, παραδίδωμι is the operating verb at every transfer point: Judas hands over Jesus (Matt 26:15), the chief priests hand him over to Pilate (Matt 27:2), Pilate hands him over to be crucified (Matt 27:26). The same verb covers the betrayer's act, the religious leaders' act, and the Roman official's act. But the theological dimension breaks open in Romans 8:32: 'He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.'

The word translated 'gave him up' is παρέδωκεν — the same verb. God παραδίδωμι-s his Son. This is the divine passive that restructures the entire passion narrative: what looks like Judas's betrayal and Pilate's cowardice is also, at a deeper level, the Father's own handing-over of the Son for the sake of humanity. Paul uses this double dimension deliberately in Romans 4:25: Jesus was 'handed over for our trespasses and raised for our justification.'

The one being παραδίδωμι-d is the Lord of creation. The one doing it is his Father. And the purpose is not merely judicial but redemptive. Isaiah 53:6 and 53:12 lie behind this: 'the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all' and 'he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.' The NT's παραδίδωμι is the Greek clothing of Isaiah's servant theology.

The preacher who holds this word can see the passion narrative entire: Judas acts, Pilate acts, the Father acts — and only the third act is the one on which salvation turns.

Cheir means hand, and by extension may refer to touch, grasp, agency, action, strength, or entrusted responsibility. The New Testament uses hand language in very concrete ways: Jesus stretches out His hand and touches a leper, believers are secure in His hand, God stretches out His hand to heal, and the hand of the Lord is with gospel witness. The same word also appears in warnings about laying on hands too quickly and about the fearful reality of falling into the hands of the living God.

Cheir is therefore not a single symbol. It is a concrete body word that Scripture uses for mercy, security, divine action, human responsibility, ministry recognition, and judgment.

Apokteino means to kill, put to death, or cause death. New Testament writers use it for the human killing of Jesus, the authorities' settled plan to execute Him, His foretold rejection and death, and the cross's paradoxical destruction of hostility. The verb names lethal action plainly and should not be softened into generic opposition. Yet responsibility must be stated with each passage's actors and redemptive frame.

Acts addresses Jerusalem hearers while proclaiming God's resurrection; it does not authorize collective blame against Jewish people. First Thessalonians' polemic likewise cannot sustain antisemitism. The gospel exposes murderous human sin across rulers and peoples, announces Christ's willing self-giving and victory, and forms communities committed to protecting life, pursuing justice, and refusing hatred.

Λυπέω (lypéō) means to grieve, cause sorrow, or experience distress. Herod feels grief yet chooses reputation, oaths, and guests over justice, proving that sorrow alone does not produce repentance. In Gethsemane Jesus begins to be deeply sorrowful as He approaches the cup appointed by the Father, giving grief a place within sinless obedience. Romans warns believers not to distress a brother through food choices, because love values the person for whom Christ died above exercising liberty.

Paul acknowledges that a corrective letter caused sorrow, then distinguishes temporary grief that leads toward repentance from destructive sorrow. Peter says believers may suffer grief in varied trials while rejoicing in living hope. The verb names pain, not its moral value; cause, object, response, and outcome determine whether sorrow is cowardly, compassionate, corrective, obedient, or refining.

διδάσκαλος (didaskalos) is a teacher, one who instructs others and whose influence is measured by the truth taught and the lives formed. In the Gospels the title is used prominently for Jesus. He accepts “Teacher and Lord” because the words rightly name His relation to the disciples, yet He also forbids status-seeking uses of teaching titles that obscure the one Teacher and the brotherhood of His followers.

Luke 6:40 states the formative force of instruction: a fully trained disciple becomes like the teacher. Acts 13:1 shows teachers serving alongside prophets in the church at Antioch, while James 3:1 warns that teachers face stricter judgment. The noun does not always denote a formal church office, and the title alone does not certify faithful doctrine. It identifies a role of real formation and accountability.

Christian teaching is therefore never merely the transfer of information; under Christ's authority it aims to shape disciples through truthful instruction, embodied example, and service to the church, while accepting sober judgment for what is taught.

βασιλεύς is the Greek word for king, and the New Testament places it at the center of the most contested question in all of human history: who actually holds ultimate authority over creation? The word appears in Roman imperial courts, in the mouths of the Magi searching for a newborn ruler, in Pilate's interrogation chamber, and on the banner over the cross. Every occurrence stands in implicit or explicit competition with the imperial claim — Caesar is βασιλεύς, and the question the Gospels press relentlessly is whether Jesus is something Caesar is not.

The Old Testament background is essential. The Hebrew word מֶלֶךְ (melek) carried the same weight: Israel's kings were always measured against the divine standard. The prophets consistently indicted kings who ruled by coercion rather than covenant, who enriched themselves at the expense of the widow and orphan, who trusted in military alliances rather than in Yahweh. The Psalms held open a vision of the ideal king — the son of David who would rule with justice and righteousness, before whom all other kings would bow. The Magi, the Psalms, and the Prophets all press toward the same horizon.

Jesus complicates every category the word carries. He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a warhorse — a deliberate inversion of royal processional imagery. Before Pilate, he affirms he is a king but insists his kingdom is not of this world's type. He is crowned with thorns and mocked with the title that is actually true. The resurrection vindicates what the crucifixion appeared to defeat, and the Revelation of John names him KING OF KINGS — the title that claims his kingship supersedes every earthly sovereign absolutely and finally. For preaching, βασιλεύς forces a decision: every human claim to ultimate authority is either submitted to Christ or set against him. There is no neutral ground.

Huios names a son, and in the New Testament it carries several important uses: ordinary human sonship, messianic and royal identity, Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus' self-designation as the Son of Man, and believers as sons of God by grace. The term must not be flattened into one meaning everywhere. Matthew 3:17 and John 3:16 reveal Jesus as the beloved and only Son.

Matthew 8:20 uses Son of Man language for His humble mission. Romans 8:14 names believers as sons of God through the Spirit, while Galatians 4:4 grounds adoption in God's sending of His Son. For pastoral teaching, huios opens the glory of Christ's identity and the grace of believers' adoption while preserving the difference between the eternal Son and those brought into family life through Him.

Ἐλεύθερος (eleutheros) means free, exempt, or not enslaved within a stated relation. Jesus says royal sons are exempt from a tax collected from others, then chooses to pay to avoid unnecessary offense. His opponents claim ancestral freedom while denying their bondage to sin. Romans reminds believers that when they were slaves to sin they were “free” from righteousness, exposing a disastrous freedom that means alienation from what is good.

Paul tells enslaved Christians not to let status consume them, yet to use an opportunity for freedom if available. Galatians declares slave and free one in Christ without pretending social distinctions or injustice cease to exist. Freedom is always freedom from or for something; it may be civic exemption, spiritual release, moral alienation, social manumission, or equal standing in Christ.

Skandalizo names causing someone to stumble, taking offense, or falling away under pressure. The word can describe a person being offended by Jesus, shallow hearers collapsing when trouble comes, disciples faltering in the night of Jesus' arrest, or someone placing a spiritual obstacle before another believer. It is not a general word for being annoyed. Nor does it make every disagreement a stumbling block.

In Matthew 18 and Luke 17, Jesus treats causing little ones to stumble with severe warning. In John 16, He teaches so that His disciples will not fall away when hostility comes. In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul limits liberty for the sake of a weaker brother. The word helps readers see that offense, pressure, and influence can become spiritually dangerous when they draw people away from faithful trust and obedience.

Ichthys means fish. In the New Testament it usually appears in ordinary food, work, and creation settings: a child asking for a fish, disciples counting fish and loaves, fishermen hauling a great catch, the risen Jesus receiving broiled fish, and Paul naming fish as one kind of flesh within creation. The word is not itself a coded title for Christ in the biblical text, even though later Christian symbolism used fish imagery.

In Scripture's own usage, ichthys helps readers notice creaturely provision, embodied need, resurrection physicality, and the ordinary material world under God's care. Jesus feeds crowds with fish, teaches fishermen through a catch, and eats after His resurrection. The word keeps miracles and hope attached to real bodies, real food, and real creation.

כָּבוֹד is the Hebrew word most closely translated as glory, but the English word does not carry the full freight. The root meaning is weight, heaviness, something that presses down because of its sheer substance. In its human dimension, kabod describes the honor, reputation, and splendor that belongs to a person of standing: the wealth of a king, the dignity of a noble family, the visible manifestation of power and worth. But it is in its divine dimension that the word becomes one of the most theologically loaded in the entire Hebrew Bible.

The kabod of the Lord is not merely a quality He possesses. It is His active, visible, weighty self-disclosure. When God's glory fills the tabernacle, the priests cannot stand to minister. When His glory passes before Moses on the mountain, Moses must be shielded in the rock. When His glory fills the temple at Solomon's dedication, the whole house is consumed with cloud and fire. This is not metaphor. It is what happens when the weight of God's presence enters a space where human beings are present. Kabod describes the radiant, manifest, concrete reality of the living God making Himself known, and what that encounter actually costs those who stand near it.

The theological arc of kabod runs through departure and return. In 1 Samuel 4, when the ark is captured, the dying wife of Phinehas names her newborn Ichabod: the glory has departed. The name is a wound, a recognition that Israel without God's presence is not Israel at all. Ezekiel then carries this logic to its most devastating expression: in chapters 8 through 11, the kabod of the Lord rises from the cherubim, moves to the threshold of the temple, pauses at the east gate, and finally departs the city. The departure is measured and sorrowful. God does not leave in anger without warning. He leaves stage by stage, grieved by what He has seen in the sanctuary. And then, in chapters 43 and 44, the glory returns, streaming from the east, filling the restored temple, the voice of God like the sound of many waters. The return is the whole hope of the prophet.

For the New Testament, the glory of God finds its fullest and most unexpected expression in a manger and on a cross. John 1:14 uses the Greek word δόξα, the LXX translation of kabod: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. The tent-language is deliberate. He tabernacled among us, and the kabod that filled the desert sanctuary now filled a human body. At the transfiguration, the disciples see it briefly on a mountain. At the cross, what looks like loss is the glorification of the Son. The word that began as weight carries through the entire canon to land in the person of Jesus Christ.

שָׁמַע is among the most theologically important verbs in the Hebrew Bible because it holds together what English separates: hearing and obeying. In Hebrew, to šāmaʿ to someone is not merely to receive audio input; it is to hear in a way that results in a response. The same verb describes physical hearing (Gen 3:10: Adam heard the sound of the Lord), understanding (Gen 11:7: so that they may not understand one another's speech), and obedience (Exod 19:5: if you will indeed obey my voice).

The theological weight of this semantic fusion is immense: the God who speaks expects a šāmaʿ that moves, not merely a šāmaʿ that registers. The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 — Shĕmaʿ Yiśrāʾēl, YHWH ʾĕlōhênû YHWH ʾeḥād — is one of the most important sentences in the OT. Its imperative is šāmaʿ. Israel is summoned not merely to hear a proposition about divine unity but to hear-and-obey the reality that the Lord alone is God.

Covenant renewal in the OT is repeatedly framed as a call to shama; apostasy is frequently characterized as not hearing, not heeding, refusing to listen. The prophets diagnose Israel's failure in šāmaʿ terms: 'they have ears but do not hear' (Jer 5:21; Ezek 12:2). Jesus takes this language directly: 'he who has ears to hear, let him hear' (Matt 11:15; 13:9) — the repeated call to šāmaʿ that characterizes prophetic address, applied to the hearing of the kingdom.

בֵּן is the most common Hebrew word for son, and its very frequency is a pastoral warning: familiarity can blunt the word's force before we ever read the passage. At its most basic, בֵּן names a male child born into a family — a biological heir, the one who carries the family name forward, who stands in a line of descent and inheritance. But the word extends far beyond that, and the extension is not a distortion; it is baked into the Hebrew idiom from the earliest texts. Grandson, descendant, member of a tribe or nation, member of a particular class or guild, an animal of a certain age or kind, even a quality of character — all of these can be expressed by בֵּן in a construct relationship. 'Sons of the prophets' names an apprentice community. 'Son of man' is a phrase for human creatureliness. 'Sons of Israel' names a covenant nation. 'Sons of God' raises a set of interpretive questions all its own.

The pastoral depth of this word is not primarily in its range of idiomatic uses, though that range is genuinely wide. The depth comes from what the word carries relationally. A son in the ancient world was not merely a biological fact but a relational reality: he was the one loved, shaped, trained, corrected, named, blessed, and sent. The father who had a son had a future. The son who had a father had an identity.

This means that when the Old Testament speaks of God's relationship to Israel, to the king, and to the people He forms and calls — and does so using בֵּן language — something is at stake beyond family metaphor. God is not borrowing a warm human image to soften His theology. He is making a claim about the nature of the relationship itself: that it involves origination, love, inheritance, discipline, and belonging. 'Out of Egypt I called my son' (Hosea 11:1) is a covenant confession, not a sentimental comparison.

For the preacher, בֵּן is one of those words that can be passed over because it feels obvious. Slow down. The sonship language of the Old Testament is doing heavy theological lifting, and it carries load that runs all the way into the New Testament's confession that the Father sent His Son.

יְדִיד (yedid) is the Hebrew word for 'beloved' — the dearly loved one, the friend of the heart, the one who holds a special place of affection. In Scripture, it is most profoundly used of the relationship between YHWH and his people: Israel is YHWH's yedidah (feminine, Jer 11:15), Solomon is YHWH's yedidyah (Jedidiah, 2 Sam 12:25), and Psalm 45's wedding-king poem is a shir yedidot (a song of loves/beloveds).

Psalm 45:1 gives yedid its most concentrated use as a title: 'My heart overflows with a beautiful matter; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a skilled scribe. A shir yedidot (song of loves, or wedding-song for the beloved).' The Psalm is a royal wedding poem: the king in his splendor (v. 2-9), the bride's call (v. 10-12), the royal procession (v. 13-15). But the yedidot title and the king's eternal throne (v. 6-7 — 'your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom') give it a messianic register. Hebrews 1:8-9 quotes Psalm 45:6-7 of the Son, making the beloved-king of Psalm 45 a type of Christ.

Isaiah 5:1 gives yedid its YHWH-as-singer form: 'Let me sing for my yedid (beloved) a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved (dodi, H1730) had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.' Isaiah opens his vineyard parable with the words 'shir yedidi' (a song of my beloved) — the prophet addresses YHWH as his yedid (beloved), then the parable proceeds as YHWH's lament over Israel. The vineyard-beloved who disappoints is Israel; the yedid singing the song is the prophet on YHWH's behalf. The yedid language makes the prophetic lament intimate: this is not merely legal accusation but the grief of a beloved who has been failed by those he cherished.

Jeremiah 11:15 gives yedid its covenant-crisis form: 'What right has my yedidah (my beloved one, feminine) to be in my house when she has done many vile things? Can vows and sacrificial flesh avert your doom? Can you then exult?' YHWH calls Israel his yedidah even in the context of covenant-breaking: the intimacy of the yedid-relationship survives even the accusation. The question is whether the beloved can carry on in YHWH's house while behaving in ways that violate the covenant. The answer is no — but the fact that YHWH still calls Israel his yedidah means the relationship has not been simply discarded.

Psalm 127:2 gives yedid its rest-gift form: 'It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved (yedido) sleep.' YHWH gives sleep to his yedid: the rest that anxious toilers cannot find through their own efforts is given as a gift to those whom YHWH loves. The yedid does not earn rest — it is YHWH's gift of love to the one he cherishes.

For the preacher, יְדִיד (yedid) gives the congregation one of the most intimate OT covenant-relationship words: to be YHWH's yedid is to be the dearly beloved — the one YHWH cherishes, sings for, names (Jedidiah), and gives rest to as a gift of love.

עֶבֶד (eved) means slave, servant, or worshiper — a range that moves from the legal institution of slavery to the most honorable title the OT can give to one who belongs to and serves God. The local Hebrew index counts about 803 occurrences, and the entry's theological center is the eved YHWH (servant of the Lord) — the title given to Moses, David, the prophets, and supremely to the Servant of Isaiah 40-53 whose suffering and vindication Isaiah describes in detail.

The eved YHWH title in Isaiah's servant songs (Isa 42:1-9; 49:1-13; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12) is the OT's most developed theology of servanthood. The servant is God's chosen one in whom God delights (42:1), the one who brings justice to the nations (42:1-4), the light of the world (42:6), and — in the most striking movement — the one who bears the iniquities of the many and is 'wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities' (53:5). The eved suffers not for his own sins but for the sins of others, and through his suffering the covenant purposes of God are advanced.

Moses is the paradigmatic eved YHWH in the Pentateuch: 'Moses the servant (eved) of the Lord died there in the land of Moab' (Deut 34:5). The title at Moses' death is the OT's highest recognition of a human life — he who served the Lord is memorialized as His eved. The Psalms use eved as a self-designation before God: 'Save your servant (eved) who trusts in you' (Ps 86:2), 'your servant meditates on your statutes' (Ps 119:23). This is the posture of the covenant person before God: not a contractor negotiating terms but a eved belonging entirely to the one who is Lord.

The word's dual use — both legal slavery and honored service — is itself theologically significant. To be an eved YHWH is to be completely dependent on and belonging to God: one's labor, one's direction, one's identity all flow from the Lord. What looks like limitation from outside is honor from within. The greatest human beings in the OT are called God's eved; the greatest NT servants take their vocabulary from this tradition (Paul: 'Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus').

For the preacher, עֶבֶד is the word that names the ultimate human vocation: belonging to and serving the God who made us and redeemed us, after the pattern of the One who came 'not to be served but to serve' (Mark 10:45).

שׁוּב is the great turning-word of the Hebrew Bible. At its most basic it describes physical motion — someone who goes away and comes back, an army that retreats, a hand that is withdrawn. But from that material root, Scripture draws something far more weighty: the movement of the whole person away from destruction and back toward God. In the prophets especially, שׁוּב becomes the central verb of appeal, the word God uses when He calls His people to abandon the path they are on and orient themselves toward Him again. It is not merely an emotional experience or a private spiritual adjustment. It is a reorientation — a turning of direction, will, loyalty, and practice.

Two dimensions of שׁוּב must be held together. The first is departure: genuine covenantal turning involves leaving something — an idol, a pattern of injustice, a posture of self-sufficiency, a covenant broken. The prophets are clear that returning to God means turning away from what is wrong. The second is arrival: the movement is not only away from sin but toward a Person. The prophets consistently frame this as return to YHWH, to His ways, to His covenant. שׁוּב is therefore not self-reform. It is relational re-entry — coming home to the God who has not moved.

What makes this word theologically irreplaceable is the exile context in which it burns most brightly. Israel's displacement from the land is never presented simply as a geopolitical catastrophe. It is the spatial consequence of a spiritual direction. The nation had turned away from God, and the curses of the covenant followed. But through the prophets, God calls שׁוּב — not simply as a demand, but as the announcement that return is still possible, that the door has not closed, that the God who judged is also the God who restores.

In pastoral use, שׁוּב must not be reduced to a single sermon moment or an altar-call transaction. Its roughly 1,073 occurrences span the full range of Israelite life — narrative, law, wisdom, prophecy, and prayer — which means the turn it names can be initial, repeated, communal, individual, urgent, and ongoing. The NT counterpart G3340 metanoeō carries forward this same dual structure: a change of mind that issues in a changed direction. To understand שׁוּב is to understand why biblical repentance is neither self-flagellation nor superficial remorse. It is the movement of a person, or a people, who turn from where they were headed and walk back toward the God who has been waiting.

אֱמוּנָה is the Hebrew noun for faithfulness, reliability, and steadfastness — and it is the word Habakkuk 2:4 uses when it says 'the righteous shall live by his אֱמוּנָה.' The English tradition debates whether that verse means faith (the believer's trust) or faithfulness (the believer's consistent conduct) — but the Hebrew word encompasses both, because in the OT the two are not separable.

אֱמוּנָה is the quality of being אֱמֶת — true, reliable, trustworthy — embodied in consistent action over time. BDB's primary range includes: firmness, steadiness, fidelity, trust, honesty. The word derives from the root אָמַן (to be firm, stable, trustworthy), the same root that gives אָמֵן (amen) its meaning: this is firm, this can be counted on, this is established.

אֱמוּנָה is indexed in the local Hebrew artifact at about 49 OT occurrences, primarily in the Psalms. It describes both God's faithfulness (Ps 36:5 — 'your faithfulness reaches to the skies'; Ps 92:2 — declaring God's אֱמוּנָה every morning) and the human character that the covenant calls for (Ps 119:30 — 'I have chosen the way of faithfulness'). The Psalmists repeatedly appeal to God's אֱמוּנָה as the basis for their confidence that he will act: what God has been, he will continue to be.

He is not unpredictable, not capricious, not liable to change the covenant on a whim. His אֱמוּנָה is the stability of the universe — 'your faithfulness is established in the very heavens' (Ps 89:2). For the preacher, אֱמוּנָה is the word that connects the doctrine of God's trustworthiness to the practice of human trust. When Habakkuk says the righteous shall live by אֱמוּנָה, he is saying that the life of the צַדִּיק is sustained by both God's faithful reliability (which creates the conditions for life) and the human response of trusting steadfastness (which is how that life is lived).

The NT's justification vocabulary inherits this double register: the faith through which we are justified (Rom 1:17) is the human response to the faithfulness that God has always been.

יָד is the Hebrew word for the open hand — not the clenched fist, not the closed palm — and that distinction is already theologically freighted. BDB separates יָד from כַּף (H3709, the hollow or closed hand) to identify יָד as the hand in its reaching, extending, working, receiving, and directing posture. The word occurs over 1,600 times in the Hebrew Bible, which means it is not a specialist term. It is one of the most natural, bodily, and pervasive words in the entire vocabulary of Scripture.

At its most literal, יָד names the human hand as the instrument of labor, craft, war, blessing, and touch. But almost immediately in the scriptural witness, the hand becomes a figure for something larger: it speaks of a person's agency, reach, control, power, and presence. The hand of the king is the king's authority. The hand of the enemy is the enemy's domination. The hand of the Lord is the Lord's active, purposive power entering the world. When the text says that someone was delivered "into the hand" of another, it means far more than physical custody — it means transferred jurisdiction, decisive power, the capacity to determine what happens next.

For the preacher and teacher, יָד is remarkable precisely because it carries so many senses without losing coherence. The unifying thread is that a hand is the place where intention becomes action. Whether God is stretching out his hand in judgment over a nation, or Moses is lifting his hand in prayer during battle, or a psalmist is spreading out hands toward the sanctuary, the common movement is this: what is inside — power, will, authority, prayer, desperate need — reaches outward into the world through the hand. The hand is the body's point of extension and engagement.

Pastorally, the sheer frequency of יָד demands that it not be flattened into a single doctrinal theme. In one verse it is literal anatomy; in the next it is cosmic sovereignty. The entry point for any passage must be the immediate context. But the theological weight of the word in its divine usages is immense: when Scripture speaks of the hand of the Lord, it speaks of the living God as personally present, directly acting, and decisively powerful in human affairs. That is not metaphor at arm's length from reality — it is the text's way of saying God is not an absentee sovereign. His hand moves.

קוּם (qum) is the Hebrew verb for rising — one of the most common verbs in the OT (628 occurrences), covering the physical act of standing up, the establishing of covenants and kings, the arising of enemies, and the resurrection of the dead. What the word carries through all its uses is the movement from prostration or rest to active, upright engagement. When YHWH is called to qum (Ps 3:7, 7:6, 44:26), it is the call for him to move from apparent inactivity to decisive action. When the dead are said to qum (Isa 26:19, Dan 12:2), the word that governs ordinary waking is the word that governs resurrection.

Psalm 3 is the great qum Psalm. David is surrounded by enemies who say, 'there is no salvation for him in God' (v. 2). His response is to lie down and sleep, confident that YHWH sustains him (vv. 5-6). Then comes verse 7: 'Arise (qumah), O YHWH! Save me, O my God!' The divine qumah is the turning point: when YHWH rises, the enemies are struck, their jaws broken. The Psalter's prayer vocabulary is dense with qumah petitions — the people call YHWH to qum against their enemies, to qum on their behalf, to qum and not be still. The qumah of YHWH is the hinge of deliverance.

The Hiphil stem (hiqim, to raise up, to establish) carries the covenant-establishment and messianic-promise uses of qum. Second Samuel 7:12 — 'I will raise up (hiqim) your offspring after you' — is the Davidic covenant promise, with hiqim as the verb of divine action. Deuteronomy 18:18 uses hiqim for the prophet like Moses: 'I will raise up (hiqim) for them a prophet from among their brothers.' Peter quotes this in Acts 3:22 as fulfilled in Jesus. The divine hiqim establishes what cannot be established by human effort.

Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2 bring qum to its most eschatological use. Isaiah 26:19: 'Your dead shall live; their bodies shall arise (yaqumu). You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!' The qum of resurrection is the same verb as the morning qum of getting out of bed — the bodily, physical rising from death. Daniel 12:2: 'Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake (yaqitzu) — some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.' The awakening and the qum together form the OT's clearest resurrection text.

For the preacher, קוּם (qum) is the word that connects the morning alarm to the resurrection trumpet: the same movement — from lying down to standing upright — governs both.