Then a scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”
Parallel translations
- WEB A scribe came, and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
- KJV And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
- BSB And one of the scribes came to Him and said, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”
- NKJV Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”
- NLT Then one of the teachers of religious law said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
An enthusiastic scribe declares he will follow Jesus anywhere. His eager promise will be tested by Jesus' sobering reply about the cost of discipleship.
Overview
A teacher of the law, impressed by Jesus, offers wholehearted allegiance with confident words. Jesus does not refuse him but exposes what genuine following entails. The exchange introduces a recurring biblical theme, that discipleship requires counting the cost rather than acting on momentary zeal.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Luke 22:33–34He said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death!”
- Luke 14:33So therefore whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple.
- John 13:36–38Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you can’t follow now, but you will follow afterwards.”
- Luke 14:25–27Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them,
- 1 Cor 1:20Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
- Mark 12:32–34The scribe said to him, “Truly, teacher, you have said well that he is one, and there is none other but he,
- Luke 9:57–60As they went on the way, a certain man said to him, “I want to follow you wherever you go, Lord.”
- Ezra 7:6this Ezra went up from Babylon. He was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which Yahweh, the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to Yahweh his God’s hand on him.
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Christ at the center
Matthew presents Jesus as the promised King — son of David, son of Abraham — the new Moses and true Israel in whom every prophecy reaches 'that it might be fulfilled.'
How Matthew 8:19 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.