This page looks at building a house on a rock and on sand, from the parable of the two houses in Matthew 7:24-27 which in Luke is immediately after the parable of the sheep and goats in Luke 6:46-49.

For more information, see the following: Matthew 25:31-46 Parable of the sheep and goats

There is reason to believe that Matthew took shorthand and what he wrote was close to what Jesus actually said, albeit Aramaic put into Greek. Matthew as a tax collector would have been able to do a form of shorthand, remember details, and know both Aramaic and Greek (and Latin, though it was not called that at that time).

The Luke account appears to take the Matthew account literally, adding some literal details not in Matthew, and leaving out some important details that are in Matthew.

For that reason, this page will concentrate on the Matthew account. For additional details of a more literal interpretation of this passage, see the Luke account.

Since a primary meaning of the verses to be covered involve a "house", let us look at the word for "house".

The German word "das Haus" ≈ "the house" and is related to the Old English word "hus" ≈ "house" which is the source of the English word "house". We are interested in the Greek word for "house".

Let us now look at the verses for what is here called the parable of the two houses.

The "liken" in the above verse indicates that an analogy or comparison is being made.

The important words here include the following in the KJV.

• "wise"
• "house"
• "built"
• "rock"

The modern Greek word "ωκοδομήσεν" (o-ko-tho-MEE-sehn) ≈ "built" and there appear to be no important nuances here. interestingly, the Old English word "getymbrede" ≈ "build" is, literally, to "timber".

There is a subtle difference between being "wise" and being "prudent". The word "wise" has a connotation of knowing a lot and how to use that knowledge. Being "prudent" is not so much about being "wise" but knowing how to make the best trade-offs with respect to some set of efficiency criteria and how it may be important in the future. Someone who is, by the book, intelligent, but lacks common sense and/or prudence, might be euphemistically called "clever"

The world is full of "clever" people.

The modern Greek word "φρόνιμος" (FRO-nee-mos) ≈ "sensible, prudent" and can mean "wise" but in the sense of "sensible" and/or "prudent". The Latin word "prudens" ≈ "prudent" with "wise" in the sense of "prudent", and is the source of the English word "prudent".

This word is from the Latin word "provideo" ≈ "foresee, act with foresight" and is from two Latin words.

• The Latin prefix "pro" ≈ "forward, in front, prominence" and is used in many English words as a prefix.
• The Latin word "video" ≈ "I see" and has a sense of "knowing" from what is "seen".

The Old English word "gleaw" ≈ "wise, prudent".

The same distinction is made in the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25.

The Greek versions switch the order of "wise", as in "prudent", and "foolish".

The Latin word "fatuus" ≈ "foolish, stupid". So the "prudent" man builds a "house" on a "rock". That is, with some thought for the future and taking many efficiency conditions into consideration.

For a logical example of a prudent analysis, see Pascal's wager.

Many languages have many words for "rock" or "stone" or "pebble", etc. Greek is no exception.

How can one build a "house" on a "rock"?

Many monasteries were built on top of hills or rocks so that they could literally let their light shine. Is this what Jesus meant?

How can one build a "church" on a "rock"?

Early in his ministry, Jesus gives Simon the name "Peter" that means "rock" or "stone".

The Hebrew word "וכפים" (we-ke-pim) ≈ "and the rocks" and is used in Job 30:6.

Note that the Latin sound for "c" was originally "k" and later changed to the softer "c", just is it did in English. We still have some of those words such as "come", "came", etc., while, for example "Caesar" was originally with a "K" sound, from which comes the German word "Kaiser" and the Russian "Czar" (the "s", "k", "ks", "ts", "z" sounds are very interchangeable linguistically).

The name "Cephas" is the name given to Peter by Jesus.

• The modern Greek word "πέτρα" (PEH-tra) ≈ "stone, rock" which is the source of the English word "petrified" and from which we get the English name "Peter".
• Another Greek word is "λίθος" (LEE-thos) ≈ "stone, rock", from which we get "lithography", "paleolithic", etc.

The "Peter principle" in business, that one is promoted until one reaches one's level of competence or incompetence, comes from the originator of the idea, Peter Drucker.

The follow-on idea, the "Dilbert principle", by Scott Adams, is that one does not wait for one to reach a level of incompetence, but promotes right to that level from much earlier in the process.

The German word "der Fels" ≈ "the rock" as in the English word "feldspar".

But what is the "Rock" that Jesus is referring to? A full discussion is left for another time, but the alternatives include the following.

• Peter and Peter alone, as in the Catholic (and/or Eastern Orthodox - to all of the apostles, not just Peter) Church
• The confession of faith of Peter.
• Both of the above.
• Something else.
• All or some of the above.

Aside: This was at the place considered the "gates of hell".

Details are left as a future topic.

Some people (e.g., evolutionists) believe that we came from a rock, as predicted by Jeremiah, using the modern Greek word "λίθος" (LEE-thos) ≈ "stone, rock".

The "winds blew" is a more real version of the fairy tail of the big bad wolf that huffed and puffed and tried to blow the houses of the pigs down (straw, brick).

The important words here include the following in the KJV.

• "foolish"
• "house" (same as previous verse)
• "built" (same as previous verse)
• "sand"

The Latin word "harenam" ≈ "sand, arena" and sometimes shortened to the Latin word "arenam" ≈ "sand, arena".

Notice how Jesus often covers both aspects to insure that the message is more clear.

• In terms of mathematics, this is an "if and only if" type of situation.
• In terms of statistics, this is covering a "conditional probability" both way.



Details are left as a future topic.

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Most people, when building a house, will build it on a firm foundation.

In some cases, it might not be known that the foundation is, say, on a fault line - not good in the case of an earthquake.

Whenever people build a house at the beach, instead of building it on stand, the house is actually built on stilts or poles that reach down to a firmer foundation.

Tents are designed for a temporary situation. Camping on sand may not matter - unless there is a storm or surge, etc.

Many inexperienced campers will camp an a firm foundation, for all "in tents", but it may be in a low area or an a place where rain or a f/ash flood will inundate that area. The foundation did look firm on a local level, just not good on a global level where water accumulates.

During World War II, quonset huts were designed, first at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, for a quick temporary building, perhaps on sand depending on the immediate military needs.

How many people have actually built a house on a weak foundation such as sand? How likely is this to happen?

The comparison Jesus makes is interesting in that no one would really try to build a house on a weak foundation.

Let us investigate further.

What could happen to make technology "not work"?

Remember, networking is good, not working is not good.

What would happen if all computer chips stopped working in the continental United States?

What could do that?

How about a nuclear explosion above the plains of central USA? Any kind would have this effect. It does not have to be very precise.

EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) could cause major problems to any technologically advanced system.

What types of devices contain computer chips?

• car - has dozens of chips
• cell phone
• computer
• cell phone towers
• gas pumps
• ATM's
• ...

What happens in a paperless environment when digital technology stops working and where everyone has forgotten how to do it the old way?

The report to the government about EMP came out the same week that the 9/11, and was largely ignored.

An explosion like an EMP can happen with sufficiently strong plasma radiations, such as sometimes happens in the sun or the explosion of a nuclear device in the atmosphere. That is why many nations agreed to ban above-ground nuclear testing. The idea was good press and easy to reach an agreement, since anyone doing such tests would destroy their own infrastructure.

This would be somewhat like the use of gas in World War I. Sometimes, the wind changed direction and the gas ended up killing ones own troops.

The Greek word for "plasma" appears a number of times in the LXX (Septuagint) and GNT.

The early state of creation is often called "chaos" (from Greek mythology).

A "plasma" in physics is the fourth state of matter (dissociated ions) after solid, liquid and gas. A natural example of a plasma is a lightning bolt.

An artificial example of a plasma is a neon light (that contains neon that when on glows).

The chemical element "Neon", atomic number 10, was named for the Greek «νεο» because it was newly discovered (by Sir William Ramsay and Morris W. Travers in 1898).

The modern Greek word "νέος" (NEH-os) ≈ "new". The Greek prefixes «νου» and «νεο», as in "neolithic", mean "new".

Neon is a "noble gas" that can be used in what are called "neon lights". Different gases yield different colors.

• neon: orange
• hydrogen: red
• helium: yellow
• carbon dioxide: white
• mercury: blue

The first neon light was by Georges Claude and first appeared at the Paris Motor Show in 1910.

In Psalms 103, the LXX uses both "plasma" and "dust" (related to "chaos") in the same verse - a form of Hebrew poetry.

The Hebrew word "עפר" (a-par) ≈ "dust".

The KJV word "frame" is in the sense of "form" that fits with "dust".

The Hebrew word "יום" (yom) ≈ "day".

Note that according the KJV (and Hebrew) God had a bad Monday (the evening before until Monday evening) since God did not see anything good this day. Tuesday, however, is the day of double blessing which is why Hebrew weddings were often on Tuesday, the third day.

Note above that the LXX does have God seeing that this day is good. Did the LXX add this to the text? Did the Hebrew text remove it to go from eight times to seven times that God saw that what he did was good? It is not clear. Here is a hypothetical thought.

What happens if these "waters" of "plasma" are associated with the "waters" that destroy the "house" built on "sand" in Matthew 7:24-27?

How could that happen? Let us investigate. Could a world economy be destroyed in a few hours?

What do you need to build a computer?

To build a computer, you need a switch.

• George Boole: Boolean logic using and, or, not, etc., in late 1800's.
• Claude Shannon, established information theory: Masters thesis in 1939 on how to build a computer using switches according to Boolean logic.

What do you need to build a faster computer?

To build a computer, you need a switch. To build a faster computer, you need a faster switch.

What is a transistor?

A transistor is an electronic switch (i.e., an on-off switch that can be automatically controlled).

There are many possible switches.

• mechanical switches
• vacuum tubes
• transistors
• integrated circuits
• very-large scale integrated circuits
• molecular switches (?)

To build a faster computer, you need a faster switch that can be automatically turned off and on.

Some companies are spending or have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to find faster switches (e.g., for quantum computing).

A transistor has three connections (based on voltage and resistance).

• input
• output
• control switch

A transistor is a switch put on silicon.

What is silicon?

The Latin word "silex" ≈ "flint, silica" is the basis of the name "silicon" for atomic element 14 coined in 1817 by chemist Thomas Thomson with ending "-on" as in "carbon".

Where is silicon found in abundance? Sand is a granular material consisting of many materials but usually contains a lot of silicon.

• Silicon is found on any beach.

Silicon is a semiconductor.

What is a semiconductor?

The word "semi" means partial or partly from the Latin prefix "semi" ≈ "half, partial".

• semi-sweet chocolate (chocolate with not as much added sugar)
• semi-trailer (trailer without a front axle)

A semiconductor is a partial conductor of electricity. This is what is needed to make a switch.

Silicon Valley is a valley in California where the weather is nice, making it easier to have a clean climate for making pure silicon needed for computer chips.

As (noted security podcaster and authority) Steve Gibson from GRC says about getting a secure computer.

• Step 1: Get a bucket of sand. (Since you wall have to make your own semiconductor chips).

Link: https://grc.com

The transistor allows a computer to be

• smaller,
• faster, and
• require less power.

We get a more powerful computer for the same price. Over the years, transistors have gone from a few to a chip to billions to a chip. This is Moore's Law in action.

So here is a somewhat fanciful scenario that puts some of the parable of the two houses into a modern context, as an intellectual exercise.

Another somewhat plausible scenario is to use the gladiator combats used as entertainment by Rome where the combatants fought each other on a sand floor. The Latin word "arena" ≈ "sand, arena".

Let us review the relevant verses before looking at a more modern scenario.

The word "house" is the basis of the word "economy" which meant "steward" in Bible times. Today, the world economy is built on computer technology that is essentially created from sand - silicon. If waters represent "plasma", and a flood of such plasma arrives, in the form of EMP, then the world economy that is built on computer technology would quickly fail.

What is this "rain" anyway? The same word (verb, not noun) is used to describe the "rain" on Sodom and Gomorrah.

Somehow the "rain" causes a "flood". What exactly is this flood? There are some other interesting questions.

• The "flood" beats on the "house", not on the "rock" or the "sand".
• Is the "wind" that "blows" incidental or needed? It "blows" on the "house", not the "foundation". Floods usually do not need "wind" to cause their effects.
• The "house" "fell", as in the fall that leaves one a "poor" person.
• Why was the "fall" of the "house" a "great" fall?

In the case of an earthquake, a rock is not a good foundation. Buildings need to be more on sand is in having some "give" to them. If the EMP were only in a specific geographic location, then just that large area (e.g., the continental United States) would be effected, as it was in Hawaii in the early 1960's when an EMP disrupted electronics in Hawaii, over 500 miles away from the blast and not using any modern computer technology. Today, most systems, from cars to gas pumps to phones to elevators, etc., are so dependent on computer technology that they would cease to work after such an attack. In most cases, there is no manual paper backup method.

Who would be so foolish as to build their house on sand? Has that been done with an economy built on a man-made technology based on sand? Perhaps it would be better to build one's house on a rock such as the Rock of Jesus Christ who transcends the time and space of this universe.

For completeness, here is the Luke version, which omits some details and adds some literal interpretations.