One is the Only Number
The functional path of oneness is not an abstract unity but a lived encounter of utter dependence. Western thought, enslaved by the grammar of the Anglo-Saxons, treats the human as an individual: a self-contained atom, an object unto itself. It imagines freedom as isolation, and isolation as freedom. But this supposed independence becomes sterility: the atomized person, cut off from the Shepherd’s breath, is lost in a sea of thorns, choked by its own irrelevance.
True independence lies not in the language of atoms but in the biology of divine anatomies, in the irreducibility of God’s living functions. The Semitic root does not define a solitary “one” but a functional, dependent, and connected one. Every creature is undoubtedly one, yet cannot sustain itself any more than a cell can live apart from the body.
As the body cannot live without its head, the tree without the earth withers.
The triliteral root—three consonants binding the Tree of Life to the Master who gives it breath—embodies this living unity. Each consonant functions only in relation to the others; none can speak alone. Like branches drawing life through hidden roots, utility flows from dependence on him, not autonomy.
In this linguistic body, the Semitic scrolls convey the unity of divine oneness: connection without possession, coherence without control. To be yaḥid is to be fragile, dependent, and open without self-reference: the earthen vessel through which the breath of ha-ʾEḥad flows.
Western language, by contrast, breeds an unconscious polytheism of the self. When every person becomes an independent atom, the world fills with gods. Each will asserts its own dominion; each word competes for sovereignty. Polytheism, at its base, is war: the multiplication of possessive wills in endless collision. The Lukan crowd becomes a pantheon of thorns, a battlefield of competing gods. The soil of faith is twisted into a field of confrontation, where the multitude gathers against the Lord and his Christ to suffocate the one who brings the life-giving breath of his instruction.
Yet within that suffocating crowd stands the yaḥid, Jairus, whose “only daughter”—his yeḥidah—lies dying. His lineage collapses; his name withers. Yet in this desolation, he does not press or grasp; he kneels before the “one.” There, in the stillness of dependence, the breath returns, and the Shepherd that the cares of this life cannot choke breathes life into the earthen vessel that has ceased to strive.
μονογενής (monogenes) / י־ח־ד (yod-ḥet-dalet) / و-ح-د (wāw-ḥāʾ-dāl)
One and only; single of its kind; only-born; only, only one, solitary, unique.
“She was his only one [יְחִידָה (yeḥidah)]; he had no other son or daughter.” (Judges 11:34 )
Here יָחִיד (yaḥid) expresses the fragility of the earthen vessel. In verse 34, the human line rests upon a single, irreplaceable life. Jephthah’s entire legacy depends on his yeḥidah; when she is offered, the limits of family and human continuity are laid bare. The father’s grief, bound to his only daughter, exposes the futility of lineage and the inevitability of dependence on God. The yaḥid becomes the mirror through which the insufficiency of man encounters the sufficiency of God.
“Deliver my life from the sword, my only one [יְחִידָתִי (yeḥidati)] from the power of the dog.” (Psalm 22:21) LXX 21
David cries from the edge of annihilation. His yeḥidati (“my only one”) refers to his only life (nefeš). He stands surrounded by predators, stripped of every defense, holding nothing but the breath that God alone can sustain. In that setting, ha-yaḥid encounters ha-ʾEḥad; the singular human breath encounters the One God who gives it breath. The weakness of the individual, the threatened “only life”, is the functional context of י־ח־ד (yod-ḥet-dalet) where triliteral replaces human vulnerability with God’s sufficiency.
“Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am alone [יָחִיד (yaḥid)] and afflicted.” (Psalm 25:16 ) LXX 24
Here, yaḥid is not emotional loneliness but martial isolation: the condition of a soldier or supplicant with no human ally, no support, no constituency. The psalmist is cut off from every network of defense; he stands as the yaḥid before ha-ʾEḥad. His solitude is not inward melancholy but strategic exposure. He is a man encircled and undone, left with no strength but God’s. In that position, the oneness of God supplants the weakness of the individual, and dependence itself becomes the ground of divine action.
“Rescue my life from their ravages, my only one [יְחִידָתִי (yeḥidati)] from the lions.” (Psalm 35:17) LXX 34
The psalmist again names his life (nefeš) his yeḥidah: his one, irreplaceable self surrounded by devouring forces. This cry is not heroic but helpless; the yaḥid has no shield, no strength, no tribe. He stands as the fragile earthen vessel awaiting rescue from the ʾEḥad who alone grants and restores the breath of life.
“They have taken their rabbis and monks as lords besides God and the Messiah, son of Mary; yet they were commanded to worship One God [إِلَـٰهًۭا وَاحِدًۭا (ʾilāhan wāḥidan)]. There is no god but he. Glory be to him above what they associate with him.” (Qurʾan, Surat al-Tawba سورة التوبة “The Repentance” 9:31)
The yaḥid stands before al-Wāḥid as a fragile vessel, emptied of pretense, whose worth lies not in possession or inheritance but in exposure. To be yaḥid is to stand alone—not because one has chosen solitude, but because every other support has failed. It is the state of Jairus in Luke 8:42, David in Psalm 22:21, and Jephthah in Judges 11:34—each reduced to dependence, each holding a single, irreplaceable life before the one who gives it.
Yet the religious mind, ancient and modern alike, mistakes the vessel for the seed. It clings to fleeting human breath instead of to the one who gives breath. This is what Qurʾan 9:31 exposes in its indictment of clericalism: those who mistake the earthen vessel, which passes away, for the words of God, which do not.
This is also the folly of the crowds in Luke 8. They gather not to hear the divine instruction but to choke it—to smother the seed because it threatens their economy of possession. They are the ʿedah, the swarm around death. They handle Jesus like a toy, fascinated with what can be held, pressed, traded, and measured; they prefer the earthen vessel to the living seed. They worship the perishable container rather than the imperishable Word, the finite dust rather than הָאֶחָד (ha-ʾEḥad), the one from whom all life flows.
But the yaḥid—the one left with nothing—sees through the mirage. Standing before al-Wāḥid, Jairus discovers that what endures is not clay but command. The earthen vessel passes away; but the Word of God abides forever.
συμπνίγω (sympnigo)
To press in so tightly that one can barely breathe; to crowd around or press hard against; to suffocate.
“The one sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke [συμπνίγει (sympnigei)] the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (Matthew 13:22)
Here, συμπνίγει (sympnigei, “to choke together”) describes the suffocation of the word by external anxieties. The seed, which should rest in open soil, is entangled in a life obsessed with possession and survival. The yaḥid, however, must lose its breath, must be emptied, so that the seed of ha-ʾEḥad/al-Wāḥid can breathe. Only when the vessel cracks open does the word take root.
“Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked [συνέπνιξαν (synepnixan)] it, and it yielded no crop.” (Mark 4:7)
Mark uses the aorist plural συνέπνιξαν (synepnixan, “they choked it together”). The image is violent: the field itself turns hostile, and what was meant for fruit becomes a site of struggle. The plural subject hints at the crowd, the ʿedah, that smothers the singular seed. What should have been a space of growth becomes the field of martial abuse: many pressing against one, the same pressure that will later suffocate the one who carries the word in Luke 8:42.
This is the inversion of the sacred pattern: the yaḥid standing before al-Wāḥid in submission and dependence on him. Here, the order is reversed: the rabim, the many, rise up against the one. They refuse the discipline of submission that alone allows the seed to live. The thorns are not merely worries or pleasures; they are the multitude of competing wills, each asserting its own sovereignty, each choking the divine instruction before it can bear fruit. The yaḥid stripped of all agency receives the seed able to yield life.
“But the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke [συμπνίγουσιν (sympnigousin)] the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (Mark 4:19)
Now the verb is in the present tense: συμπνίγουσιν, they keep on choking. The process is continual: the daily suffocation of instruction by habit and the pursuit of wealth. This is the economy of possession: the constant impulse to turn the seed into property, resulting in sterility.
“The seed which fell among the thorns—these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked [συμπνίγονται (sympnigontai)] with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” (Luke 8:14)
Here, Luke continues the pattern, shifting from the seed to those who receive it. Anxiety, pleasure, and wealth choke and suffocate those being fed by God’s instruction. The participle συμπνίγονται (sympnigontai, “they are being choked”) marks not a single act but an ongoing condition of asphyxiation: a people slowly deprived of breath because they draw their life from what cannot give it.
This is the ʿedah in Luke: the crowd that gathers around death and, in so doing, shares its fate. Their faith is tactile and transactional; they worship the earthen vessel, the surface of things, not the living breath of God’s Spirit that animates them. Their religion is the idolatry of proximity.
They want to touch what is holy but not to obey it.
Luke’s diction is exact and merciless. The same verb that described the thorns choking the seed now reappears in Luke 8:42, where the crowd literally chokes Jesus. The multitude that smothers instruction now suffocates the Instructor. What they do with the seed in the parable, they do to Jesus in the street.
The itinerary of sympnigo closes its circle: the ʿedah, enthralled by the earthen vessel, suffocates the very breath it seeks. The Word must pass through that suffocating pressure to reach the one who still believes—the yaḥid, Jairus—whose Abrahamic trust becomes the breathable soil where divine fruit can thrive.
“For he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. But as he went, the crowds pressed against [συνέπνιγον (synepnigon)] him.” (Luke 8:42)
The echo is deliberate and devastating. The same verb that describes the thorns choking the seed now describes the crowds choking Jesus: the yaḥid who refuses the mirage of wealth and pleasure. The Parabler who once spoke of suffocation now suffers it. The multitude, blind to the one who stands among them, does not recognize him as the sower of the seed, the circle and circumference, the alpha and the omega, the breath moving through the night. They handle the Shepherd of the Most High like an object of fascination, a curiosity, a toy. They press upon him without understanding.
The Teacher who came to give instruction is suffocated by those seeking signs and spectacle. They are the thorns of the parable, and their proximity is fatal. Their eagerness to touch the vessel of God’s instruction betrays their inability to hear his words. They draw near to consume, not to obey; and in their nearness, they press in to choke the life they claim to seek.
Only Jairus, the yaḥid stripped of hope, perceives the truth. His daughter—his yeḥidah—lies dying, the last ember of his name. In that desolation, he alone approaches the representative of al-Wāḥid rightly: not as a marvel to possess but as the sole source of life. The crowd presses, but the yaḥid kneels; the many suffocate, but the one receives. In him, the broken ground opens once more, and the seed, at last, breathes.
“Blessed is he in whose hand is dominion.” (Qurʾan, Surat al-Mulk سورة الملك “The Dominion” 67:1)★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★