What Does Acts 11:3 Mean?
Saying, You went in to men uncircumcised, and ate with them.
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
Saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.THE KEY
The Greek verb builds “together with them” into “ate,” making the shared table the visible crossing of a boundary.
THE MEANING
The charge names a boundary being crossed: entering the company of uncircumcised men and eating alongside them. The shared meal makes that crossing visible; belonging is enacted at the table.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a boundary marker alone decides who may be received. The complaint exposes that claim through the act of eating together.
THE ROOT
συνέφαγες
synephages
GROWS FROM
ἐσθίω (esthiō), with the aorist stem φαγ- (phag-)
Eat; σύν (syn) means “with” or “together,” so the compound means “eat together with.”
“ate with” in this verse is synephages. The verb συνέφαγες means “you ate together with them”; its “together” is built into the Greek verb. The KJV’s “eat with them” carries this too: the charge concerns shared eating, not merely entering a home.
ALSO GROWS
esthiō: Eat.
ἐσθίω
This is the verb’s present form; eating is the action at the center of the charge.
synesthiō: Eat together or eat with.
συνεσθίω
The σύν (syn, “with/together”) prefix makes the shared nature of the meal explicit.
THE PATTERN
A shared meal makes a boundary visible by treating someone as a companion at the table.
And he took curds and milk, and the son of the herd which he had made, and set it before them, and stood beside them under the tree, and they ate.And the separated ones and the writers murmured, saying, "This man receives those who miss the mark, and eats with them."For before some came from James, he ate together with the nations. But when they came, he drew back and marked himself off, fearing those from the circumcision.THE THREAD
And he said to them, You know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to cling to, or come near, one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.Acts 10:28 names the judgment beneath the table dispute: a person is not to be called common or unclean. Acts 11:3 shows the contested boundary made visible through entering a home and eating together.
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