What Does Acts 10:13 Mean?
And a voice came to him, Rise, Peter; slaughter, and eat.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.THE KEY
The Greek verb translated “kill” also names sacrificial slaughter, so this command lets a meal and an offering share one word.
THE MEANING
The voice orders Peter to rise, kill, and eat; in the vision, nourishment comes through an animal’s death. For you now, the command brings the boundary of what may be received into the open, while the next utterance names God’s cleansing as the measure.
THE ROOT
θῦσον
thýson
GROWS FROM
θύω
thýō
To slaughter or kill; also, to sacrifice or offer.
The Greek verb θύω (thýō, “to slaughter; to sacrifice”) ranges from killing an animal for food to sacrificial offering. English “kill” narrows the sound; the Greek leaves the offering sense audible without declaring this meal itself a sacrifice.
ALSO GROWS
thysía: sacrifice, offering
θυσία
This noun from the same verb family makes the offering sense of “kill” audible beneath the command.
etýthē: was sacrificed
ἐτύθη
In 1 Corinthians 5:7, this form from the same verb family describes Christ as sacrificed, showing that θύω can name offering as well as slaughter.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places food and sacrifice at the boundary where life is given over.
Every creeping thing that lives shall be food for you; as the green grass I have given you all.And bring the grain-fed calf and slaughter it, and let us eat and be glad.Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even the Anointed One, our Passover, was slaughtered for us.THE THREAD
And bring the grain-fed calf and slaughter it, and let us eat and be glad.Luke uses θύσατε (thýsate, “kill”) from the same verb family as Acts’ θῦσον (thýson, “kill”), then pairs it with eating. The parallel lets Peter’s terse command resonate with a feast where slaughter becomes the threshold to shared food.
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