Measuring Age By Height

Mat 6:27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit unto his stature?

Even in the different standard versions of the Bible, this phrase has a dizzying array of translations, from adding time to your life, or adding height to your stature, and so on. The problem arises from the Greek.

Let's start with "worrying." In Greek, the word is merimnao, which means "to care for," "to be anxious about," or "to meditate on." We don't have a word in English that combines caring for something, being anxious, and meditation. When you care for something, you also worry and think deeply about it.

The word translated as "add" is even more complicated. It is prostithemi, which is formed from two root words that mean "to put towards." It means a lot of things including means "to put to," in the sense of holding something close or applying medicine to a wound. It also means "to hand over" or "to give something more." It also means "to impose upon" or "to attribute to." It means "to add," but it also means "to agree" or "to associate with" or "to bring upon oneself" or "to apply to oneself." You get the idea, that of adding one thing to another.

The word translated as "cubit" means "forearm," which is the measure of length used in a cubit.

The word translated as "stature" is helikia, which means "age." It also means "the prime of life," "manhood" or "maidenhood," others of the same age, that is, a generation, and time. It only means "stature" in the sense that people grow up and attain their full stature.

So we have a conflict here between a measure of length, the forearm, being added or applied to a measure of age. This is why some Bibles translate this phrase as adding inches to height, others adding time to our lives. There seems to be a conflict.

Even if we accept the idea that helikia means stature, why would Christ suggest that someone would want to add twenty inches to their height? After all, by worrying, we cannot add an inch, much less twenty inches. Why the extreme statement?

The key, at least for me, is in the underlying theme of this whole section of the sermon, the conflict between the physical and spiritual. Yes, we can interpret this as meaning adding some measure to our height, but the phrase also translates as "Which of you through meditation (or caring, or worry) can apply (touch) one forearm to your age?" The forearm is, after all, a metaphor for a man's strength, and the physical. But our age is not a physical thing. It cannot be touched or interfered with by any physical force. We can move our body through space, but our body moves through time of its own accord, or rather, by God's plan. "Applying one forearm" might also be a description of arm wrestling. So the phrase might well describe arm wrestling with your age, another impossibility.

Christ is talking about work in the previous passage, work we do with our arms. Here he notes that the real work, our passage through time, isn't work that we can do. It is only work that God does for us. The phrase may not translate into English, but the meaning is much deeper than it looks at first.