What Does Acts 10:5 Mean?
And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter.
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 now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter:THE KEY
The verse hides a two-part motion: men are sent outward, while one named person is summoned toward the encounter.
THE MEANING
Direction takes shape as movement: some people are sent toward Joppa, and one known person is summoned by name. For you now, the next encounter is not abstract; it takes shape through a concrete sending and a name spoken aloud.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that meaningful direction bypasses ordinary human action: here, the encounter takes shape through people being sent and a person being summoned.
THE ROOT
πέμψον
pémpson
GROWS FROM
πέμπω
πέμπω (pémpō) means to send or dispatch.
The first verb sends people outward, while the second uses a compound of the same verb for sending for Simon. English “send” and “call for” make two unrelated actions; Greek keeps the shared sending-motion visible, then turns it toward a named person.
ALSO GROWS
metapémō: send for, summon
μεταπέμπω
This is the compound behind the verse’s “call for” Simon; it makes the summons another form of sending.
propémō: send ahead, escort, send onward
προπέμπω
This related compound shows the same root describing movement directed toward what comes next.
ἐπικαλεῖται
epikaleîtai
GROWS FROM
καλέω
καλέω (kaléō) means to call, name, or summon.
“whose surname is” in this verse is epikaleîtai. The clause identifies Simon as one who is called by the name Πέτρος (Pétros, stone). The calling verb makes the summons personal: the messenger is directed to a known person, not just a place or task.
ALSO GROWS
klētós: called, summoned
κλητός
This related form describes someone identified through a call, echoing Simon being named in the instruction.
klēsis: calling, summons
κλῆσις
This noun makes explicit the act of calling that accompanies the sending.
שִׁמְעוֹן
Shim'on
GROWS FROM
שמע
שמע (shamaʿ) means to hear, listen, or heed.
The Greek name Σίμων (Simōn, Simon) carries the Hebrew name שִׁמְעוֹן (Shim’on, heard), associated with שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear) in Genesis 29:33. Here that name is spoken inside a summons, so hearing and being called meet in one person.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: hear, listen, heed
שָׁמַע
The root’s basic action gives Simon’s name its association with hearing.
shemiʿah: hearing
שְׁמִיעָה
This branch makes hearing a named faculty, resonating with a person identified in a spoken summons.
shemuʿah: report, something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch is what is heard or received, extending the root’s connection between hearing and communication.
THE PATTERN
A meeting takes shape through a call that sets people in motion toward one another.
The LORD, the God of the heavens, who took me from my father's house, and from the land of my birth, who spoke to me, and swore to me, saying, To your seed will I give this land; he shall send his messenger before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.And the LORD called Samuel, and he answered, Here I am.A man came, sent from God, and his name was John.THE THREAD
Send therefore to Joppa, and call Simon to you, whose surname is Peter; he lodges in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea; who, when he arrives, shall speak to you.The same Greek verb πέμπω (pémpō, send) appears in both instructions, so the repetition is lexical as well as narrative. Cornelius’s retelling shows the first dispatch becoming a meeting arranged around the same named person.
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