What Does Acts 11:9 Mean?
But the voice answered me a second time from heaven, What God has cleansed, you do not call common.
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 the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.THE KEY
God’s cleansing is not waiting for your judgment to confirm it.
THE MEANING
The voice answers: God has cleansed it; your naming cannot undo that act. The verse places your judgment after God’s cleansing, not over it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that your judgment can revoke what God has cleansed.
THE ROOT
ἐκαθάρισεν
ekatharisen
GROWS FROM
καθαρ
kathar
clean, pure
The word translated “cleansed” belongs to the same word family as “clean” and “cleansing.” The verse treats cleansing as a real change of condition, not a label left for someone else to approve.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: clean, pure
καθαρός
The adjective names the clean condition that the verb “cleansed” brings about.
katharismos: cleansing, purification
καθαρισμός
This noun names the cleansing act from the same word family, keeping the focus on what has been done.
κοίνου
koinou
GROWS FROM
κοιν
koin
common, shared; also profane or defiled
The verb behind “call common” means to treat something as common or profane. The verse sets that act against God’s cleansing: the human label does not undo what God has made clean.
ALSO GROWS
koinos: common, shared; in some contexts, profane or unclean
κοινός
This adjective is the word family’s basic description of what is common, the status the verse says not to assign.
koinōnia: sharing in common
κοινωνία
This related noun shows the family’s sense of what is shared or held in common, illuminating the status named by “common.”
THE PATTERN
When God cleanses, the clean condition is not undone by another person’s judgment.
Remove my falling short with hyssop, and I am clean; tread me, and I am whiter than snow.And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will. Be clean. And straightway his leprosy was cleansed.Who gave himself for us, that he might loose us from all living without boundary, and cleanse for himself a people that is his own, burning for good works.THE THREAD
And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will. Be clean. And straightway his leprosy was cleansed.“Clean” and “cleansed” here come from the same Greek word family as “cleansed” in Acts 11:9. The shared root lets the command in Acts carry the same force: God’s cleansing names a condition, not a status awaiting human permission.
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