What Does Acts 10:40 Mean?
Him God raised up on the third day, and gave him to be seen in the light;
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
Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly;THE KEY
Resurrection here is not only rising from death; it is life brought into view.
THE MEANING
God raises Jesus from death and brings him into view; the verse holds resurrection and disclosure in one movement. What death has hidden becomes visible as living presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death has the final claim and keeps the raised one forever hidden.
THE ROOT
ἤγειρεν
ēgeiren
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
To wake, rouse, or raise up.
ἤγειρεν is a form of ἐγείρω, a verb used for waking someone and raising the dead. Its word family holds awakening and resurrection together: what has fallen is roused and raised again.
ALSO GROWS
egersis: A rising; resurrection.
ἔγερσις
This noun names the rising as an event, placing the verse’s action within the same resurrection vocabulary.
synegeirō: Raise together.
συνεγείρω
The same raising verb can describe people being raised together, extending the word’s motion beyond one person.
ἐμφανῆ
emphanē
GROWS FROM
φαίνω
phainō
To appear or become visible.
“gave him to be seen in the light” in this verse is emphanē. The word translated “openly” belongs to the φαίνω family of appearing and becoming visible. The verse joins raising with manifestation: the raised one is brought into view.
ALSO GROWS
phaneroō: Make visible; reveal.
φανερόω
This related verb makes explicit the disclosure carried by “openly” here.
epiphainō: Appear; shine forth.
ἐπιφαίνω
It carries the same movement from hiddenness into visible presence.
THE PATTERN
God’s raising carries what death holds into renewed life and visible presence.
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before his face.God raised him up, having loosed the labor pangs of death, for it was not possible for him to be held by it.And that he was buried, and that he has been awakened on the third day according to the writings.THE THREAD
Jesus answered and said to them, Unbind this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.John uses the same verb ἐγείρω for Jesus’ promise to raise the temple in three days. The shared root lets that promise echo God’s act in Acts 10:40: both speak of resurrection through the concrete motion of being raised.
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