What Does Acts 10:14 Mean?
But Peter said, By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.
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
But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.THE KEY
Peter’s “common” and “unclean” are distinct labels, while the reply that follows locates the authority to redefine them in God’s cleansing.
THE MEANING
A settled conviction can stand in direct tension with the Lord it addresses. “Common” names what is treated as ordinary or profane; “unclean” names what is impure, so the categories are related but not identical. Peter’s certainty is sincere, yet the vision’s next word remains free to challenge it.
THE ROOT
κοινόν
koinon
GROWS FROM
κοιν-
koin-
Shared, common, or belonging to the ordinary rather than set apart.
Here koinos carries the sense of what is treated as common or profane, beyond merely something shared by many people. Its word family also names sharing and participation, revealing how a word for the common becomes a purity boundary in Peter’s statement.
ALSO GROWS
koinōnia: Sharing, participation, or fellowship.
κοινωνία
The shared root shows that “common” belongs to a family of words about what is held or participated in together.
koinōneō: To share in or take part in something.
κοινωνέω
This branch makes the root’s sense of shared participation audible beneath the purity category.
ἀκάθαρτον
akatharton
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
Clean or pure; the prefix a- negates it, giving “unclean.”
“unclean” in this verse is akatharton. Akathartos is formed from katharos, “clean,” with a privative prefix: it names what is not clean. The two labels are therefore not duplicates, and the vision’s reply addresses “common” directly by speaking of what God has cleansed.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: Clean or pure.
καθαρός
This is the positive form beneath “unclean,” making the negation in akathartos visible.
katharizō: To cleanse or make clean.
καθαρίζω
The same word family supplies the cleansing language in the vision’s reply.
THE PATTERN
Purity categories remain accountable to God’s distinction and cleansing rather than standing as self-authorizing human labels.
To part between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.There is nothing from outside a man, entering into him, that can make him common. But the things coming out of a man, those are the things that make the man common.For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be thrown away when it is taken with thanksgiving.THE THREAD
And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed, do not make common.The voice repeats Peter’s adjective koinos (κοινόν, “common”) and answers it with katharizō (καθαρίζω, “cleanse”). The repeated vocabulary makes the pivot precise: Peter’s settled label meets what God has cleansed.
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