Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"Occupy till I come" is a command to stay busy or take up space
"Occupy" in 1611 meant "do business" or "trade," a commercial term, not a call to stay generally busy.
Luke 19:13, in every translation this tool compares.
In the parable of the pounds, a nobleman gives his servants money and instructs them, "Occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13, KJV). Modern "occupy" means to fill a space or hold a position; the word's older commercial sense, to engage in trade, to do business with, was still common in Jacobean English (the King James translators' own era), surviving today mainly in "occupation" as a word for one's trade or profession.
Read with the modern sense, the line becomes vague, general advice to stay active. Read with the word's actual 1611 meaning, it's a specific, concrete instruction matching the parable's own plot exactly: put this money to work, trade with it, generate a return, which is precisely what the story goes on to judge the servants by when the nobleman returns.
