What Does Acts 12:6 Mean?
And when Herod was about to lead him forth, that same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and the guards before the door were watching over the prison.
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 when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison.THE KEY
The Greek word for the guards and the word translated “prison” share one root of watching and custody.
THE MEANING
Your circumstances can be tightly guarded and still not exhaust what you experience: this verse places sleep inside real custody. The restraints remain real, and they do not occupy the whole scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that if every boundary around you is guarded, no part of you can rest.
THE ROOT
φύλακες
phylakes
GROWS FROM
φυλακ-
phylak-
Guarding, watching, or keeping custody.
“guards” in this verse is phylakes. The Greek word for “keepers” and the word translated “prison” share this root. The same word-family names both the watchers and the custody surrounding Peter, so the verse shows a whole system enclosing him.
ALSO GROWS
phylakē: Watch, guard post, custody, or prison.
φυλακή
This is the Greek word translated “prison” here, linking the place of confinement to the word for its guards.
phylassō: To guard, watch, or keep.
φυλάσσω
The related verb names the act behind the guards’ presence: watching and keeping custody.
κοιμώμενος
koimōmenos
GROWS FROM
κοιμα- (koima-), from κοιμάω (koimaō)
To sleep or fall asleep.
The ordinary verb for sleeping is also used figuratively for death, as in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. Peter’s sleep remains ordinary and real, while the shared word lets the scene carry a quiet edge of mortality.
ALSO GROWS
koimízō: To put to sleep or lull to sleep.
κοιμίζω
This related verb shows the same word-family extending from sleep itself to causing sleep.
koimētērion: A sleeping place; later, a cemetery.
κοιμητήριον
This later word derives from the sleep verb and preserves sleep as an image for death.
THE PATTERN
Sleep can appear within danger without making the danger disappear.
I lie down and sleep; I wake, for the LORD bears my weight.Then the sailors were afraid, and each one cried out to his god. They hurled the vessels of the ship into the sea, to lighten it. But Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship, and he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.And he was in the stern, asleep on a pillow, and they woke him and said to him, Teacher, does it not weigh on you that we perish?THE THREAD
But we do not want you to be unacquainted, brothers, concerning those who sleep, so that you do not ache as the rest do, those who have no hope.The Greek verb rendered “sleeping” here is the same κοιμάω (koimaō) word rendered “are asleep” for the dead in this verse. That shared word draws ordinary sleep and mortality close together, adding a shadow to Peter’s vulnerability without suggesting he has died.
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